
Class JS^&iJ. 
Book- , H 1 5" 



Unitarian Wutos $Mttcaiefc 



A REPLY TO 



REV. HENRY M. DENISON'S REVIEW 



OF 



"UNITARIAN VIEWS." 



BY JOHN H. HEYWOOD, 

•I 

fHtnister of tfie Mmtmim (Efjurcf), Houts&t'He, Itentttcfcg, 



LOUISVILLE: 

HULL & BROTHER, PRINTERS. 

1855. 






- 

Uv,. 






EEPLY. 



At the session of the " Conference of Western 
Unitarian Churches/' held in the city of Louis- 
ville, Ky., May, 1854, a report was presented 
by a Committee appointed at the previous ses- 
sion, held in the city of St. Louis, Mo., to whom 
the following Preamble and Resolutions had 
been referred. 

"As there is misunderstanding of the views 
of Unitarian Christians on important subjacts, 
it is deemed proper to make some declaration in 
reference thereto ; 

"Resolved, That we regard Jesus Christ not 
as a mere inspired man, but as the Son of God ; 
the messenger of the Father to men, miraculously 
sent; the mediator between God and man; the 
Redeemer of the world : That we regard the 
miracles of the New Testament as facts on which 
the gospel is based," 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



The Report was listened to with profound 
attention, and, after full discussion, was ordered to 
be published with the accompanying resolutions. 

"Resolved, That we have heard with much 
profit the Report of Judge Pirtle, and that it 
be referred to the Executive Committee to be 
printed. 

"Resolved hotvever, That, under our organiza- 
tion as the Conference of Western Unitarian 
Churches, we have no right to adopt any state- 
ment of belief as authoritative, or as a declara- 
tion of Unitarian Faith, other than the New 
Testament itself, which is the divinely-authorized 
rule both of faith and practice. 

"Resolved, That we earnestly recommend to 
the churches and societies here represented by 
us, to adhere more and more closely to the di- 
rect instructions of our Lord Jesus Christ, that 
we may become living branches of the true vine 
and bring forth the Christian fruit of good works, 
to the glory of God." 

The Report, accordingly, was printed and 
sent into the world — an unassuming little vol- 
ume entitled " Unitarian Views." 

This volume has been reviewed by Rev. Henry 
M. Denison, rector of St. Paul's Church, Louis- 
ville, Ky. 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 5 

As Unitarian Christians we rejoice that the 
volume has been reviewed — that the Reviewer 
has taken pains to call public attention to it, 
and has done the best in his power to awaken 
an interest in the important subject discussed. 
Truth never fears discussion, and as lovers of 
truth we desire that our views may be subjected 
to the most rigid investigation. If, on examina- 
tion, they can be proved defective or erroneous, 
be it so. We make no claim to infallibility, and 
we trust that we have no such pride of opinion, no 
such idolatry of consistency, as to make us un- 
willing to acknowledge our error when convinced 
of it. But if discussion only reveals the more 
clearly the harmony of these views with the 
truth as it is in Jesus, with his divinely-author- 
ized standard, be it so. We certainly shall not 
mourn, nor will the cause of Christianity receive 
detriment. " To this end was I born," said our 
great Master, " and for this cause came I into 
the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth 
my voice." 

But while discussion is always to be welcomed, 
it is to be regretted that the reviewer has intro- 
duced into the controversy an element, which 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



ought to have had no place in it, by indulging 
in an insinuation implicating the mental clear- 
ness, if not the moral integrity, of the writer of 
the Report and his associates. Insinuations, 
innuendos, we are aware, are weapons not unfre- 
quently employed in theological discussions, but 
the frequency of their use makes them none the 
less objectionable — none the less unworthy to be 
employed by Christians. The Christian should be 
by eminence the true gentleman, one whose cour- 
tesy flows from a perennial spring, Christ's prin- 
ciple in the heart; and, of all discussions, those 
pertaining to subjects of highest interest should 
be most characterized by justice and candor. 
The insinuation to which we refer is that of pla- 
giarism, than which a more offensive charge can- 
not be made against an author. We can hardly 
believe that the reviewer means deliberately to 
accuse the writer of the Report of this serious 
violation of integrity. If this is his purpose, 
if he thinks that the writer is amenable to this 
charge, that he could be guilty of the meanness 
as well as the falsity of literary theft, it would 
have been more manly to make a direct, une- 
quivocal accusation. But if he did not mean to 
bring this charge, why does he say (p. 46) " that 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



the originality of this whole Report is no greater 
than was absolutely necessary to allow for the 
difference of opinion which every Unitarian holds 
from every other Unitarian upon a subject, where 
the only one faith has been already appropriated 
and held by the church Catholic since the Chris- 
tian Era;" and (p. 49) that "the correspond- 
ence between the statement of the Committee 
and that from the graceful pen of Dr. Channing, 
as contained in these two extracts is, to say the 
least, very considerable " ? 

That two men, writing on the same subject, 
should fall into similar trains of thought, and even 
employ similar expressions, is no uncommon oc- 
currence. If the reviewer had merely chosen to 
intimate the existence of such coincidence as 
this, there would have been no occasion for cen- 
sure or regret ; but his language implies, or at 
least seems to imply, something more than this 
and different from this. The implication is, that 
the writer of the Report took the thoughts and 
language of another, and that other one of the 
most eminent of American authors, and attempt- 
ed to palm them oil upon readers as his own. 
Of course, to all who know the writer, such an 
implication would be as nothing, and, to the wri- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



ter himself, they would be as the idle wind; but 
they are nevertheless to be regretted, because 
they introduce an element, which, as we have 
said, should have no place in theological discus- 
sions, and the tendency of which is to embitter 
discussion, to engender prejudice, and cause per- 
sonal alienation. 

It is to be regretted, moreover, that the re- 
viewer, in proposing to quote the language of the 
Report, should have omitted sentences which are 
evidently essential to a fair representation and a 
full appreciation of the opinions and sentiments 
of the writer. On page 152 he quotes as follows : 
"To pause about what we have heard in the 
prayers of our fathers and mothers seems almost 
like disrespect; and it requires heroism to 
search if it be true. It takes strength to unfet- 
ter the reason, and strike for truth only ; but 
this is an age of moral courage, self-reliance, and 
love of truth; God loves a brave man, and a 
man who is brave enough to come through ranks 
and throngs of bishops, emperors, kings, and par- 
liaments, to inquire of Him for truth." These 
sentences are quoted, as if one immediately fol- 
lowed the other in the report. There is no 
mark, no sign, to indicate omission. The read- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



ers of the review must necessarily have supposed 
that the sentences were placed in this connection 
by the writer of the Report and, therefore, may 
have received the impression that the writer is a 
man, capable of making light of the religious 
views and feelings of revered parents — of regard- 
ing and treating such views and sentiments as 
u childish trammels and dreams ;" an impression, 
it is needless to say to any who have read the 
Report, or any who know the writer, utterly with- 
out foundation. By none is the remembrance of 
venerated parents more sacredly cherished, by 
none are the religious sentiments dear to those 
parents more profoundly respected, than by him. 
This quotation is made for the purpose of sus- 
taining the assertion of the reviewer, that the 
writer of the Report ri ascribes, with much confi- 
dence, the monopoly of all true bravery to those 
who have succeeded in divesting themselves of 
such childish trammels and dreams," i. e. to Uni- 
tarians. Very strange must it seem to any who 
know the spirit of the writer of the Report, or 
of Unitarians generally, that such an "assump- 
tion of all moral heroism " should be made, for 
no class of Christians have ever been more ready 
than they to discern and acknowledge the vir- 



10 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED, 

tues and graces of fellow-Christians. But the 
truth is that no such assumption is made, and 
if all that the writer said upon the subject had 
been quoted, the readers of the Review could have 
had no difficulty in seeing that no such assump- 
tion is made. The writer, in answering the 
question, why doctrines, which he and his broth- 
er-Unitarians regard as erroneous, "should have 
had the reliance of a majority of those professing 
the Christian faith for so long a time," refers 
first to the fact that the decrees — i. e. at Nice, 
Constantinople, and Chalcedon — "were enforced 
by the political as well as the spiritual authority, 
by the anathemas of the bishops and the edicts 
of a tyrant, demanding men to yield conscience 
and reason, or be destroyed." Next he alludes 
to the influence of the dark ages, and then pro- 
ceeds as follows : " when the world awoke again, 
the habits of ancestry, the faith of parents, were 
on the children. Had the decrees set up other 
doctrines, would not these doctrines have had the 
same force, the same veneration, to-day, as what 
they did set up ? Who can deny this ? Noth- 
ing is so strong to bind men as the religion of 
their ancestors. Even superstition is entailed, 
and wears not out with ages. The subject of re- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 11 

ligious faith is an awful subject. We are afraid 
even to question a creed that we have been taught 
is nothing less than our salvation. If men have 
been taught, by inherited instruction, in the church 
and at the fireside, such a doctrine for instance, as 
that Christ was really God, they feel as if they 
were impeaching holiness and doing blasphemy to 
doubt it. And to pause about what we have 
heard in the prayers of our fathers and mothers 
seems almost like disrespect, and it requires her- 
oism to search if it be true. The sentiment is 
beautiful, sublime ; but truth is first and above all. 
Thus succeeding generations are induced to yield 
the implicit reliance, which belongs only to the 
scriptures of truth, to that which was made by 
usurped authority, enforced by oppression and 
wrong. It takes strength to unfetter the reason 
and to strike for truth only; but this is an age 
of moral courage, self-reliance, and love for truth. 
God loves the man that loves the truth. God 
loves a brave man, and a man who is brave 
enough to come through ranks and throngs of 
bishops, emperors, kings, and parliaments, to in- 
quire of Him for truth." 

This is the language of the Report, in which 
the writer claims not " the monopoly of oil true 



If UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

bravery/' but simply states well-known facta and 
acknowledged principles. The reviewer may 
differ from the writer in regard to the truth of 
the doctrines announced in the decrees, but he 
will not deny that the decrees were enforced by 
political as well as spiritual authority, and by the 
anathemas of bishops. The hurling of anathe- 
mas has not yet ceased. The Athanasian creed, 
which the Episcopal Church in England requires 
its ministers and members to read and assent to, 
dooms all who dissent from its statements to ev- 
erlasting perdition. " Whosoever will be saved, 
before all things it is necessary that he hold 
the Catholic Faith; which faith, except every one 
do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he 
shall perish everlastingly;" and this faith it pro- 
ceeds to set forth in a series of propositions 
which, to say the least, present a very enigmati- 
cal and paradoxical appearance, as for instance: — 
" Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such 
is the Holy Ghost: the Father uncreate, the Son 
uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate: the Fa- 
ther incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, 
the Holy Ghost incomprehensible: the Father 
eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eter- 
nal; and yet they are not three eternals, but one 



UNITARIAN-VIEWS VINDICATED. 13 

eternal. As also there are not three incompre- 
hensibles, nor three uncreated; but one uncreated 
and incomprehensible." These are propositions 
which an influential church , the established church 
of one of the most enlightened and powerful na- 
tions on Earth, holds up before men; and for 
doubting which it dooms them to eternal woe. 
This is done in the nineteenth century, and the 
world flatters itself that this age is somewhat in 
advance of previous ages. 

The reviewer will not deny the facts which 
the Report states; nor, we imagine, will he con- 
trovert the principles to which it refers. We may, 
for the sake of illustration, take this case. Neither 
he nor any Protestant Christian will deny that 
there are great obstacles in Roman Catholic coun- 
tries in the way of truth, and that it requires de- 
cision and moral courage for a man, born in one 
of those countries and educated by parents whom 
he loves, even to examine into, much more, to 
depart from the faith which they revere; and yet, 
neither he nor any other Protestant would wish 
or expect to be understood as claiming all brav- 
ery and all moral heroism for Protestants. With 
the same justice might the charge of making this 
offensive assumption be brought against him as 



14 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

against the writer of that Report; who, we repeat, 
stated indisputable facts, and referred to incon- 
trovertible principles; and who, moreover, in de- 
claring that, however beautiful and sublime is the 
sentiment, which makes us shrink from doubting 
the opinions held by revered parents, " truth is 
first and above all," only reiterated the declara- 
tion of our Saviour, "he that loveth father or 
mother more than me is not worthy of me." 

The Review presents other misconceptions of 
the meaning and spirit of the writer of the Re- 
port and of the body of Christians with which 
he is connected, to which we will briefly allude. 
After quoting a passage from the Report, in which 
the belief of Unitarians in the Holy Spirit is 
stated in clear and strong language, in which "the 
great truth of the presence, power and influence 
of the Holy Spirit," is presented as "of unutter- 
able importance, a truth full of consolation and 
hope, which lies at the foundation of spiritual 
religion ; without which, religion would become 
mere formalism, and regeneration — that new birth, 
that spiritual renewal, without which one cannot 
enter the kingdom of heaven — a meaningless 
term," the reviewer expresses his "astonish- 
ment that the pressure of orthodoxy from with- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 15 

out should have extorted such averments from 
men who deny the personal existence of that 
blessed Spirit, &c." pp. 93, 94. 

" Extorted such averments ! " Singular lan- 
guage, this ! What does the reviewer mean ? 
That these declarations were not made freely but 
reluctantly, not because the heart of the writer 
prompted him to make them, but for policy's 
sake, and to impose upon his fellow Christians a 
statement of faith not justified by his real senti- 
ments? We hope that the reviewer did not 
mean this; but if he did, we can assure him that 
the writer of the Report is too sincere a man to 
pursue such a course himself, and too high-mind- 
ed a man to think of accusing any Christian 
gentleman of pursuing it. And, moreover, we 
can assure him that he entirely misunderstands 
the feelings and views of Unitarian Christians. 
They have no faith in the doctrine of mental 
reservation, and no occasion for it. Responsible 
for their opinions to no ecclesiastical body, sworn 
to support no human creed, accustomed to receive 
few courtesies from self-constituted guardians of 
orthodoxy, they probably have as few temptations 
to overstate or understate their opinions as any 
class of Christians in the wide world. The reli- 



16 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

gious opinions which they form and express, are 
such as they believe the Sacred Scriptures teach, 
not such as they think "the pressure of ortho- 
doxy extorts." 

"The pressure of orthodoxy/' forsooth! And 
where is this vaunted orthodoxy to be found? 
Our Roman Catholic friends, whose church has 
at least the respectability of consistency, for it 
openly denies the right of private judgment in 
matters of faith, and without hesitancy pronoun- 
ces itself infallible, claim that they have it. But, 
fortunately or unfortunately, we cannot resign 
the right of private judgment; and to us, exer- 
cising that right, orthodoxy seems to have some- 
what of chameleon-character, even under the aus- 
pices of Romanism; and, moreover, our Protest- 
ant friends deny the validity of the Romanist 
claim. Shall we then turn to some body of Pro- 
testants? But to which one? To the Episcopa- 
lian, and if so, to which section of that large and 
intelligent body? Shall it be to the English Epis- 
copal church, with its threat of eternal damna- 
tion to all who cannot assent to the statements 
of the Athanasian creed? But even the good 
Archbishop Tillotson wished his church were well 
rid of that creed; and few, we imagine, of our 



UNIT IRIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 17 

American Protestant Episcopalians would require 
of us an orthodoxy quite up, or quite down, to 
the standard of that venerable but somewhat 
unintelligible formula. 

Shall we turn then to the American branch ? 
But to which branch of the American branch ? 
To the High Church or Low Church, for the dif- 
ferences seem very real between them ? Are 
we told that the differences relate to non-essen- 
tials ? It may be so, but certainly brethren 
ought not to be so widely separated, and so far 
alienated from each other on non-essentials, as to 
regard and denounce one another, as latitudina- 
rian on the one side, and non-evangelical on the 
other, for differing thereupon. Or if turning 
from these distinctly-marked divisions, we still 
continue our search, shall we find the sought-for 
orthodoxy in that portion, whether it is large or 
small, we are unable to say, represented by an 
intelligent Bishop of the Episcopal Church, in 
the statement which he once made to the writer 
of these remarks, that he would like ,to have 
the church service so altered that pious Un- 
itarians could conscientiously engage in it. For 
instance, that he would like to have the Nicene 
creed omitted, (not that he did not believe in it, 



18 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

but because he regarded the Apostles' creed as 
containing all that was essential, and in a form 
acceptable to all Christians,) and such other 
changes made, as would enable a person with 
high Arian sentiments to join in it. Certainly 
this is a very liberal, and to many minds it would 
be a very striking as well as attractive, interpre- 
tation of the requirements of orthodoxy ; but, 
unfortunately, we have little reason to believe 
that it would prove acceptable to the ministers 
and members of the Episcopal Church gener- 
ally, at least if we are to regard the reviewer 
as a fair exponent of their sentiments, when he 
declared that Unitarianism, as represented in 
the Report, "denies, or leaves out, all that is worth 
contending for, as peculiar to Christianity, all 
that distinguishes it from Judaism or (as a doct- 
rinal system) from Mohammedanism." (Review, 
p. 12.) The doctrine of the Report the reviewer 
pronounces Arianism, and Arianism he thinks 
no better than Mohammedanism, as far as all that 
is peculiar to Christianity is concerned, while the 
Bishop would gladly modify the Prayer book 
sufficiently to admit Arians into the Christian' 
fold. Truly it may be said, and with more per- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 19 

tinency than in its original application, that or- 
thodoxy is " variurn et mutabile" 

If in our search for orthodoxy we turn in vain 
to the Episcopal Church, can we look with more 
confidence of success to other Protestant ch arches? 
Too many are the divisions among them, too 
strongly-marked the lines between the Old and 
New Schools, too little the confidence between 
Andover Congregationalism with its alleged lati- 
tudinarianism, and Princeton Presbvterianism 
with its alleged rigidity, to make one sanguine 
of better success with them. 

Within a day or two we have seen some reso- 
lutions adopted by a Trinitarian association, in 
which the exposition of the doctrine of the Trin- 
ity, made by a devout and learned man, Dr. 
Buslmell, is pronounced unscriptural, heretical, 
and dangerous. Dr. Bushnell, on the other 
hand, contends that he holds the doctrine in its 
entirenesss, and in its original purity ; and that 
his exposition is in perfect accordance with the 
teaching of the church universal, and with its 
accepted standards. 

The various creeds and confessions have as sig- 
nally failed in producing uniformity in doctrinal 
opinions, as in fostering unity of spirit. 



20 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

Orthodoxy may be as real and attainable a 
thing as its advocates claim ; but in sober 
earnest, perhaps because of our want of mental 
perspicacity, to us it seems as real as the mirage 
of the desert, and as attainable as the ever- 
receding horizon ; and its advocates must excuse 
what they may call our presumption, when we 
declare, in all sincerity, that it must prove itself 
to be better defined and more scriptural than it 
has ever yet appeared ; that its defenders must 
cease to denounce each other; its Dr. Sherlocks, 
on the one hand, must cease to declare any the- 
ory of the Trinity, which " says there are three 
divine persons, and not three distinct, infinite 
minds, to be both heresy and nonsense ; " and 
its Dr. Souths, on the other hand, with the Uni- 
versity of Oxford to support him, must cease to 
pronounce " the assertion, that there are three 
infiuite, distinct minds and substances in the 
Trinity, false, impious and heretical ; " the charge 
of heresy must cease to be sent like a shuttle- 
cock to and fro by the battledoors of those who 
with equal confidence claim to be orthodox, be- 
fore orthodoxy will become a very attractive 
object to Unitarians, or its " pressure " be very 
much felt or regarded by them ; and in the 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 21 

meantime, doing as well as we may without the 
reputation of orthodoxy, we will content our- 
selves with possessing in common with our fellow 
Christians the Sacred Scriptures, unspeakably 
precious to us all, and until they teach us that 
we are in error, we will continue, to quote the 
language of St. Paul, when his orthodoxy was 
questioned, " after the way which they call heresy 
to worship the God of our fathers, believing 
all things which are written in the law and the 
prophets." 

And now we come to another apparent, if not 
real, misconception on the part of the reviewer 
of the position and views of Unitarian Christians. 
He says (p, 12) "it is to be regretted that 
the Conference at Louisville could not agree, as 
an expression of their belief, upon the very 
modest resolutions referred to the Committee 
the year before by the Conference at St. Louis." 
The resolutions referred to, or rather the resolu- 
tion, for but one was offered, was this : 

" Resolved, That we regard Jesus Christ not 
as a mere inspired man, but as the Son of God ; 
the messenger of the Father to men, miracu- 
lously sent , the mediator between God and man; 
the Redeemer of the world. That we regard 



22 UNITARIAN YIEWS VINDICATED. 

the miracles of the New Testament as facts 
upon which the gospel is based." 

The intimation of the reviewer is, that the 
reason for not adopting this resolution was, that 
the Conference, or a portion of its members, did 
not believe in the articles therein presented. 
That there are great and wide differences of 
opinion among Unitarians, no one denies. There 
has never been an attempt to deny this fact : no 
one wishes to deny it. It is a fact open, acknow- 
ledged. But this difference of opinion was not 
the reason for not adopting the resolution. 
The reason is clearly, explicitly, given in the 
resolutions which were adopted, viz. these : 

Resolved, That we have heard with much pro- 
fit the report of Judge Pirtle, and that it be re- 
ferred to the Executive Committee to be printed. 

Resolved, hoivever, That under our organiza- 
tion, as the Conference of Western Unitarian 
Churches, we have no right to adopt any state- 
ment of belief as authoritative, or as a declaration 
of the Unitarian faith, other than the JVeto Tes- 
tament itself, ivhich is the divinely-authorized rule 
both of faith and practice. 

Here is the reason given in as intelligible a 
form, and as distinctly as possible, for the non- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 23 

adoption of the resolution — that to Unitarians 
" the New Testament is the divinely-authorized 
rule both of faith and practice." The reviewer in 
a note says, " do they reject the Old Testament? 
It would seem so." 

" Seem so ! 'V Entirely gratuitous and unjus- 
tifiable is this assumption. Had not the reviewer 
read the Report with sufficient care and thor- 
oughness to observe its repeated references to 
that portion of the Sacred Volume — references 
made for the special purpose of showing the sup- 
port therein given to the Unitarian views ? 

No, they do not reject it, and we regret that 
one, who feels himself called upon and competent 
to pronounce that Unitarians, as far as doctrines 
are concerned, are no better than Mohammedans, 
should have had so little acquaintance with their 
views and mode of worship, as not to know that 
they do not reject it. The New Testament is pre- 
sented in the resolution not to the disparagement 
of the Old Testament,which was preparatory to it, 
like the law, " the school-master to bring us to 
Christ," but because it is distinctively and pre- 
eminently the book of Christianity, of our Lord 
and his apostles. The reviewer, in the same note, 
expresses his astonishment " that Unitarians lay 



24 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

so much stress upon the New Testament." We 
thank him heartily for the admission. We do 
lay great stress upon it. It is infinitely precious 
to us, the book of Christ, the book of heaven. 
But is he, a Christian man, really astonished 
that the New Testament, if a comparison is to 
be drawn between them, is dearer to us than the 
Old Testament ; that the book, which represents 
our Saviour in glorious reality, which enables 
us, as it were, to stand face to face with him, 
awakens warmer love than that which predicts 
his advent ; that the words, which fall from the 
lips of the Son of God himself, sink deeper into 
our hearts than the words of prophets and psalm- 
ists, though their lips were touched with fire 
from God's altar, and their harps were strung to 
the melodies of heaven? We do not love the 
Old Testament the less, but we love the New 
Testament more. But says the reviewer, " they 
will find much less exceptionable warrant for their 
system in the Old." Indeed ! Thanks for that 
admission, too, for the truths, which Unitarians 
hold dear, seem to them to shine out from the 
New Testament with brilliancy like that of the 
noon-day sun, and if in the Old Testament they 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED, 25 

shine with greater brilliancy, how surpassingly 
clear, how gloriously radiant they must be ! 

The reason then for not adopting the resolu- 
tion, which seems almost to have won the love 
of the reviewer because it " has so demure and 
orthodox an air," was not that there were differ- 
ences in opinion among the members of the 
Conference, whatever those differences may have 
been, but that there was entire unanimity in the 
Conference in regarding the New Testament as 
the divinely-authorized rule of faith and practice. 
The Conference thus unanimously expressed its 
desire and determination to stand on the same 
ground on which the great mass of Unitarian 
Christians have always aimed to stand, the suffi- 
ciency of the Scriptures, and the right of private 
judgment. 

Does any one say, Why, this is the ground 
which Protestantism presents ? True, and be- 
cause it is Protestant ground, or rather because, 
as we believe, it is Christian ground, we aim al- 
ways to stand upon it. Protestantism re-asserts 
the great principle announced by our Saviour 
and his apostles. " Be not ye called Rabbi, or 
Master," says Jesus, " for one is your Master, 
even Christ, and all ye are brethren ; and call 



26 UNITARIAN YIEWS VINDICATED. 

no man your Father upon the earth — I e. ac- 
knowledge the religious authority of no man, 
for one is your Father, which is in heaven." — 
Matt, xxiii. 8, 9. Here is the great principle 
clearly, unequivocally, announced by our Lord, 
the head of the church, that every individual is 
directly, constantly, immediately responsible in 
matters of faith to God and Christ, and not to 
man or any body of men. This principle strikes 
at the root of ecclesiastical domination, church 
tyranny, and it places Christian liberty, the men- 
tal and spiritual freedom of every Christian, on 
broad, deep, immovable, everlasting foundations. 
This is the principle reiterated again and again 
by St. Paul : presented in thrilling words, and 
gloriously illustrated in his life. " Stand fast in 
the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free." 
This is the clarion charge of that great apostle 
of freedom. This is the noble principle which, 
when ecclesiasticism had trampled it under foot, 
Protestantism took up, inscribed upon its ban- 
ner, and with its kindred principle, that man is to 
be justified by faith — i. e. by a living principle 
in his own heart, and not by priestly influence, 
or by compliance with prescribed forms^carried 
forth for the redemption of the world from spir- 



UNIT IRIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 27 

itual bondage. Ecclesiasticism and individual- 
ism — the one declaring that the church must 
think for a man, and the other declaring that 
the man, availing himself gratefully of all aid, 
must think for himself — these are the two great 
antagonistic principles. The one Roman Catholi- 
cism openly avows, and the other is professed by 
Protestantism. Professed, we say, for too seldom 
has Protestantism been true to its profession. 
Troubled by the inconveniences of freedom, al- 
armed by the multiplicity of sects, afraid lest all 
things should tend to chaos, it has every now 
and then called in the aid of ecclesiasticism. 
Having placed the open Bible in a man's hand, 
and commanded him to read it and learn for 
himself the truths and duties taught therein, it 
has not unfrequently been frightened because 
the man has honestly and heartily complied with 
its injunction. Perhaps the man in his study of 
the sacred Volume, is led to embrace Unitarian 
views of Christianity, and to rejoice therein. 
" This will never do," says Protestantism, or at 
least so self-appointed guardians represent it as 
saying, " I commanded you to read the Bible for 
yourself ; I have asserted your mental and spir- 
itual freedom, and I still assert it. You have 



28 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

perfect liberty to think for yourself. It is only 
Romanism that denies liberty to Christian men. 
But, then, you must remember, while you have 
entire liberty to think foryourself, that if you 
depart in the slightest degree from orthodoxy, 
it will be at your peril." "Yes," says the Church 
of England, that staunch defender of Protestant- 
ism, "you are at perfect liberty to think for your- 
self; and I will defend that liberty against all 
the Popes and Cardinals, and Inquisitors of 
Rome ; but, remember that, unless you can 
look through my Athanasian spectacles, without 
doubt you will everlastingly perish. I merely 
hint this, though I would not for the world in- 
terfere with your Christian freedom." 

And so other staunch defenders of Protest- 
antism, though without much love for English 
Episcopacy, earnestly join with it in defending 
Christian liberty against the secret wiles and 
open assaults of Romanism. " The Bible — the 
Bible without note or comment, the open Bible, 
give it to every man. Let the Word of God 
speak for itself, " But what have they to say to 
him to whom that Word seems to proclaim Uni- 
tarianism ? " You have been doubtless honest 
in your investigations, and axe sincere in your 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



conclusions ; you appear to love God and Christ, 
and to be governed by the Holy Spirit, but un- 
less you can see differently, unless you can come 
to the results which our confessions present, we 
cannot acknowledge you to be a Christian, we 
cannot admit you to the table of holy commu- 
nion." Thus Protestantism, alarmed at seeing 
its own principles faithfully carried out, every 
now and then steps down from the high and 
broad table-land, on which Christianity bids it 
stand, to the ground of ecclesiasticism, and says 
to men, u you must form and express such reli- 
gious opinions, — not as to your own individual 
mind the Scriptures seem to teach, — but such as 
the church, through its creeds and confessions, 
commands you to hold." Thus it practically 
denies its great principles — the right of private 
judgment, and the sufficiency of the Scriptures. 
It supplements the Scriptures by its creeds and 
confessions, and thus virtually does, or least at- 
tempts to do, though not in a manly and con- 
sistent way, what it denounces Roman Catholi- 
cism for doing openly, thoroughly and as a mat- 
ter of principle. 

Against this infidelity to the principles of 
Protestantism, Unitarian Christians protest.- — 



30 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

They know, for all history teaches, that the 
slightest divergence from these principles, pre- 
pares the way for and gradually leads to ecclesi- 
asticism, with all its abuses and its crushing ty- 
ranny. They know that the Saviour and his 
apostles did not demand assent to a creed as the 
evidence of Christian discipleship, but faith in 
"Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God." This 
is the faith for possessing and avowing which, 
Jesus pronounced his benediction upon Simon 
Peter : " Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona ; for 
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, 
but my Father which is in heaven." — Matt. xvi. 
17. This is the faith on which our Lord declared 
that his church should stand as on a rock, so 
that the gates of hell should never prevail 
against it. 

This is the faith, to produce and confirm which, 
St. John wrote his gospel. " These are written 
that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
the Son of God ; and that, believing, ye might 
have life through his name." — John xx. 31. 
This is the New Testament Confession of Faith ; 
and Unitarians, in common with all their fellow 
Christians, admit and assert that a church has 
a right to demand this from its members ; but 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 31 

more than this, as a test of Christian disciple- 
ship, it has no authority to demand ; and if it 
demands more than this, it demands what Christ 
did not demand, and is guilty of usurpation 
and tyranny. If a man has faith in Jesus, as 
the Christ, and leads a Christian life, he has a 
right to the Christian name, and to the enjoy- 
ment of all Christian ordinances and privileges. 
It rests not with a church to say whether or not 
he is entitled to the name. Christ has answered 
that question. It is his not to ask as a favor, 
but to claim as a right. 

This, then, is the ground which Unitarians 
hold in reference to creeds. They do not object 
to creeds as statements of religious opinion. 
Such statements any church or any individuals 
may make, and any may sign, whose hearts 
prompt, and whose consciences permit. It is to 
creeds as authoritative standards of faith, that 
they object. When claiming this character, 
Unitarians regard them as useless, inasmuch as 
they are powerless to produce uniformity of 
opinion, or even to preserve, on the part of their 
signers, a reputation for " orthodoxy." The re- 
cent discussions, in regard to the distinguished 
professors in the Andover Theological Seminary, 



32 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

afford a striking instance of the inefficacy of 
creeds. The professors in that Institution are 
not only required to sign a creed, but also to 
renew their subscription every five years ; and 
yet some of those very professors, men eminent 
for learning and undoubted integrity, are re- 
garded by not a few brethren of the same de- 
nomination as having become dangerously un- 
sound in faith. 

The inefficacy of creeds is also signally illus- 
trated in the principle avowed by Paley and 
others, that a man may conscientiously sign a 
creed even if he does not believe every thing 
contained in it, because in signing, he only de- 
clares that he substantially, in the main, accepts 
the doctrines presented. In other words, when 
a man subscribes to a creed, and thus declares 
his belief in it, he does not declare his belief in 
it, but in what he regards as true in it. Thus 
the individual man sits in judgment upon the 
creed ; and the uniformity of opinion, so much 
boasted of, is found to be only uniformity of 
profession. A very circuitous way this, it must 
be confessed, of arriving at the conclusion that 
every man is to think for himself upon religious 



UNITARIAN TIEWS VINDICATED. 33 

matters, and not the way most favorable to 
mental and moral integrity. 

Creeds, when claiming to be authoritative 
standards, are not only regarded by Unitarians 
as useless because of utter powerlessness to pro- 
duce uniformity of opinion, but as injurious in 
making opinions, rather than faith and life, the 
test of Christian soundness. They are regarded, 
moreover, as anti-Christian in proposing a test 
which Christ never proposed, and the tendency 
of which is to repel many who, in sincerity and 
love, desire to see and be with Jesus. These 
are the principles which Unitarians hold in re- 
gard to creeds ; and it was because of their firm 
adherence to these principles, and in illustration 
of them that, with entire unanimity, the Confer- 
ence of Western Unitarian Churches declared 
that it had " no right to adopt any statement of 
belief as authoritative, or as a declaration of 
Unitarian Faith, other than the New Testament 
itself, which is the divinely-authorized rule both 
of faith and practice." 

We will now notice another misconception by 
the reviewer of the opinions of Unitarian Christ- 
ians. He charges them with denying the doc- 
trine of the Atonement. " Few would anticipate 
5 



34 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

from the moderation and the semi-orthodox air 
that pervades a portion of this Report, that it 
concludes with a denial of the Atonement ! Yet 
so it is." — Review, p. 113. And on page 143, 
he says, "we insert the entire passage of the 
Report, in which it is denied." The passage is 
as follows : " Unitarians believe that salvation 
by our Lord's mission is in all things of God's 
love to his sinful creatures ; that Christ was not 
a substitution for us, to bear the wrath of God ; 
that our sins were not imputed to him ; that no 
satisfaction was demanded, and none was made. 
Some of them believe that whatever is said of 
sacrifice, in reference to the death of Christ, is 
merely figurative, so far as the similitude to the 
Jewish oblations is indicated : while others, 
among whom is the writer of this Report, be- 
lieve that there was a real expiation in love to 
us : not to affect God, but in his wise and in- 
comprehensible providence to accomplish our 
salvation." — p. 65. This is the passage quoted 
in support of the assertion that Unitarians de- 
ny the atonement; and, while quoting, he 
might have added to this passage another, found 
on page 56, of the Report, viz : "but his death 
was necessary on account of our sins. And 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 35 

when we contemplate his sufferings, brought 
about by our transgressions, oh, what can so 
powerfully impress us with the awfulness of sin ! " 
This is truly a singular mode in which to prove 
that a man denies a doctrine — to quote from 
him words in which his belief in the doctrine is 
expressly affirmed. 

The passage does not deny the doctrine of 
the atonement ; the Report does not deny it ; 
Unitarians, as a body of Christians, do not deny 
it. They deny the correctness of what is as- 
sumed as the orthodox theory of the atonement ; 
but to deny that is one thing, while the denial 
of the atonement itself is another and a very 
different thing. 

To confound the truths of Christianity with 
the so-called orthodox interpretation of them, is 
no uncommon thing. " I am surprised," said a 
Trinitarian layman, to a Unitarian friend, " that 
you should deny the doctrine of the Trinity, 
when the Bible expressly states that there are 
three co-equal and co-eternal persons in the God- 
haad." " Show me that passage," replied the 
Unitarian, "and I will assent to the doctrine." 
With eagerness the man turned to his Bible, 
confident of finding it at once. Book after book, 



36 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

chapter after chapter, was examined, but the 
passage could not be found ; and, with some- 
what of disappointment, he admitted to his 
friend that the passage was not in the Bible ; 
" but," he added, and with a manner indicative 
of his opinion that he had found its full equiva- 
lent, " it is in my Confession of Faith." So 
men confound human creeds and confessions 
with the holy Scriptures, and human interpre- 
tations of the truths of Scriptures, and infer- 
ences drawn by men from those truths, with the 
truths themselves. 

We now come, we will not say to the great 
mispresentation — for the reviewer, we trust, wrote 
in sincerity — but to his great misconception of 
the essential nature of Unitarianism. Accord- 
ing to him, Unitarianism (he is speaking of the 
Unitarianism of the Report; but we suppose 
we do him no injustice in assuming that his re- 
marks apply to Unitarianism generally) " denies, 
or at least leaves out, all that is worth contend- 
ing for, as peculiar to Christianity, all that dis- 
tinguishes it from Judaism, or (as a doctrinal 
system) from Mohammedanism," Reviow, p. 12. 

Here, then, the position is distinctly taken 
that, so far as doctrines are concerned, Unitari- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 37 

anism is not a Christian system. It follows, of 
course, that Unitarians are not Christians. 

We regret that, in this nineteenth century of 
the Christian era, any minister of the gospel 
should hold such an opinion in regard to a body 
of Christian believers, to whom he has reason to 
know the Gospel is as dear as to him or any 
other Christian ; who, we may say without pre- 
sumption, are as capable as he is of understand- 
ing what the gospel teaches. We rejoice, how- 
ever, since he holds the opinion, that he has 
frankly avowed it, and that he has openly taken 
his position in accordance with it. We are glad 
that the Christian people of Louisville, with 
many of whom it has been and is our pleasure 
and privilege to hold relations of Christian 
friendship, should know what, in the judgment 
of one who occupies the responsible 'position of 
religious teacher, "orthodoxy" is and requires. 
It is well that members of the congregation to 
which the reviewer ministers, should know that, 
according to his interpretation of Christianity, 
and his view of its claims, such of their relatives 
and friends as are connected with the Unitarian 
Church, though they are bound to them by na- 
ture and affection's ties, and though they have 



38 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

been accustomed to hold pleasant religious com- 
munion with them, cannot be regarded as 
Christians. 

It is well that the issue should be presented 
and met. If the majority of the Christian 
people of this city, after due reflection, shall 
feel themselves called upon to take the position 
which the reviewer has taken, and to deny the 
Christian name to Unitarians, be it so. We 
shall regret their decision, but shall not be made 
unhappy by it. If, on the contrary, they shall 
conclude that men who heartily believe in Jesus, 
as the Christ, the Son of God, and endeavor to 
obey his laws, are entitled, whatever denomina- 
tional title they may wear, to the Christian name, 
we shall rejoice as much for their sakes as for 
our own : as much, yes, more, for the fidelity 
thus manifested to the spirit of Christian liberty, 
than for the justice done to ourselves as humble 
members of the body of Christ. 

Let us examine the position assumed by the 
reviewer, and see whether or not it be tenable. 

The ground on which he bases his assumption 
that Unitarianism " denies, or at least leaves 
out, all that is worth contending for as peculiar 
to Christianity, all that distinguishes it from 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 39 

Judaism, or (as a doctrinal system) from Mo- 
hammedanism," is indicated in the following sen- 
tence : "We are furnished by this Report with 
a categoric denial of these articles of the Christ- 
ian faith : the deity of Christ, the humanity of 
Christ, v the deity and personality of the Holy 
Ghost, the atonement of Christ, and original or 
birth sin." 

Reserving, for the present, any remarks in 
regard to the deity of Christ, we invite atten- 
tion to the other doctrines pronounced peculiar 
to Christianity, and which Unitarianism is 
charged with denying. 

First, the humanity of Christ. The reviewer 
errs in stating that this is denied in the Report. 
The Report takes the ground, that the soul of 
Christ, that which dwelt in and manifested itself 
through his mortal frame, was a super-angelic 
soul ; but it does not, therefore, deny his hu- 
manity. Of soul, we know little ; and the con- 
nection of any soul with a mortal body is a 
transcendent mystery. When connected, how 
connected, we know not. We only know that 
it is God who connects the soul now with an 
earthly body, as hereafter He will connect it 
with a spiritual body. It is this connection with 



40 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

a mortal body — this subjection to mortal limit- 
ations, which determines the humanity of a be- 
ing, and not the position which his soul holds in 
the scale of existence. The fact, then, that the 
spirit of our Lord dwelt in a human form, and 
was subjected to mortal limitations, determines 
his humanity, to which all Unitarians hold, 
whether they adopt or not the theory of his 
pre-existence. That our Saviours humanity 
was in all respects the same with the humanity 
of ordinary men, no Christian, who accepts the 
Scripture account of the miraculous conception, 
believes; and with the same justice, on the 
ground of believing the miraculous birth of 
Jesus, might all Christians, holding to that be- 
lief, be charged with denying his humanity, as 
Unitarians are charged with denying it, because 
of the views presented in the Report. 

Secondly: The reviewer charges Unitarianism 
with being non- Christian, because of its denial of 
"the deity and personality of the Holy Ghost." 

The reader will observe that it is not on the 
ground of denying the Holy Spirit, that Uni- 
tarians are pronounced un-Christian ; for their 
belief is too clearly expressed in the Report, to 
permit this ground to be assumed. The reviewer 






UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 41 

cannot deny their belief in the Holy Spirit. 
Nay, he admits it ; for he quotes, at length, the 
passage in which their belief is clearly stated, 
and expresses his amazement that they do thus 
believe. He is astonished, to quote the language 
of the Report, that " Unitarians do believe in 
the Holy Spirit as imbuing our souls with good, 
testifying to our hearts of the Lord Jesus, sav- 
ing us from our sins, and turning us to God, 
our Father; that the great truth of the pres- 
ence, power, and influence of the Holy Spirit, is 
to us of unutterable importance." Nor is he 
alone in his astonishment ; for it is no uncom- 
mon experience with those who have coolly as- 
sumed that Unitarians are not Christians, to be 
astonished when, having taken pains to ascer- 
tain what the views of Unitarians are, they learn 
that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
all the facts and truths presented therein, are as 
cordially received, and as highly valued by them, 
as by any of their fellow-Christians. 

Nevertheless, though the reviewer must admit 
that Unitarians believe in the Holy Spirit ; that 
they regard " the great truth of the presence, 
power, and influence of the Holy Spirit, as of 
unutterable importance," he charges them with 



42 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

being non-Christian. Why ? Because, as he 
affirms, of their denial of the deity and person- 
ality of the Holy Spirit. The deity of the 
Holy Spirit the Report does not deny, Unita- 
rianism does not deny. As well might the re- 
viewer affirm that Unitarians deny the humanity 
of the spirit of man, as that they deny the deity 
of the spirit of God. But, says the reviewer, 
they deny the personality of the Holy Spirit. 
This they do deny — i. e., as the Report clearly 
states, the distinct, independent personality. 
To Unitarians, there is, to quote the language 
of St. Paul, " but one God, the Father." They 
hold that there is but one person, one being, 
whom they are to regard as God, the Supreme 
Jehovah ; and that person or being is he whom 
our Saviour teaches us to call "our Father." 
"When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in 
heaven." This is the being or person whom 
our Lord declares to be < the only true God " — 
John xvii. 3 — whom he pronounces "his Father 
and our Father; his God and our God." — John 
xx. 17. This language is positive, distinct be- 
yond the possibility of misapprehension, and de- 
cisive ; for it is the language of the Son of 
God. Taught by our Saviour, that his Father 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 43 

and our Father is the only true God, we desire 
not to know — we dare not know — any other be- 
ing or person as God. Of him, we think as 
God ,* to him, we pray as God, as Jesus has di- 
rected us to do, and to no other. This view, 
Unitarians hold as the Scripture view; and a view 
which causes all the declarations of the sacred 
Volume to be in mutual and perfect harmony. 
Here are a few of those declarations. David, in 
the fervent, heart-melting prayer recorded in the 
fifty-first Psalm, says, 11th verse, "take not 
thy Holy Spirit from me." This is his petition 
to God, not to take his Holy Spirit away. Jesus 
says, Luke xi. 14, "If ye, then, being evil, 
know how to give good gifts unto your children, 
how much more shall your heavenly Father give 
the Holy Spirit to them that ask him ! " St. 
Paul says, 1 Thes., iv. 8, " God, who hath also 
given unto us his Holy Spirit." Mark his words. 
He does not say that one person or being, in 
the Godhead, hath given another person or be- 
ing, but that God hath given his Holy Spirit. 

St. Peter, Acts x. 38, declares " how God an- 
nointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, 
and with power." 

St. John says, 1 Epistle, iv. 13, "hereby 



44 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

know we that we dwell in God, and he in us, 
because he hath given us of his Spirit." Such 
expressions, and the Scriptures abound in them, 
are perfectly clear, intelligible, and unequivocal ; 
and they are all in entire harmony with each 
other, and with the view that has just been pre- 
sented. Nor is there a single expression, or dec- 
laration of Scripture, which does not harmonize 
with it ; and none are* in more real and entire 
harmony with it, than those words of our Saviour 
— so unutterably dear to every heart which yearns 
for conformity to the divine will, and for that peace 
of God, which passeth understanding — recorded 
by the beloved disciple, John xiv. 16, 17, in 
which the assurance is given that, " The Father 
shall give you another Comforter, that he may 
abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, 
whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth 
him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know 
him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in 

you." 

This is the view which Unitarians hold in re- 
gard to God and his Holy Spirit, and which they 
hold because they believe it to be clearly, dis- 
tinctly presented by the Saviour and his inspired 
apostles. The doctrine of the distinct, indepen- 



UNITARIAN YIEWS TINDICATED. 45 

dent personality of the Holy Spirit they reject, 
because they believe it at variance with this 
view. For what is personality? Webster de- 
fines it to be " that which constitutes an indi- 
vidual a distinct person, or that which constitutes 
individuality." When, then, the personality of 
the Holy Spirit is spoken of, the language must 
denote that the Holy Spirit is a distinct indi- 
vidual, a person with all the attributes essential 
to personality, so that he can be regarded as 
distinct from all other persons, and addressed as 
distinct. But what is meant by "a person"? 
It is not Dr. Channing alone, nor the writer of 
the Report alone, who teaches that when "a per- 
son " is spoken of, a distinct, conscious, intelli- 
gent being is meant. For what says Dr. Sher- 
lock, already quoted, whose orthodoxy the re- 
viewer does not appear to doubt ? " It is plain 
the persons are perfectly distinct, for they are 
three distinct and infinite minds, and therefore 
three distinct persons, for a person is an intelli- 
gent being and to say there are three divine 
persons, and not three distinct, infinite minds, 
is both heresy and nonsense." Vind. of the 
Doct. of the Trinity, sec. 4, p. 66. Thus speaks 
Dr. Sherlock. And how does the reviewer him- 



46 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

self speak? While stating that " a unity of will 
and comprehension seems essential even to our 
wholly inadequate conception of the most perfect 
Being," he says that " probably no writer has 
gone so far as to attribute to Father, Son, and 
Spirit a unity of consciousness." So he holds 
that each person has a distinct consciousness. 
When, then, the personality of the Holy Spirit 
is spoken of, we are to understand that the 
Holy Spirit is a distinct, infinite mind, a mind 
with a consciousness of its own. And here we 
would pause for a moment to ask if the existence 
of one such mind, does not preclude the existence 
of another such ? We can conceive of any num- 
ber of finite minds existing and co-existing, but 
does not the word "infinite," if we take it in 
its full, legitimate signification, and not as a 
vague, meaningless term, compel us to believe 
that there can be but one such mind ? 

But we will not dwell on this point. We are 
to understand that the Holy Spirit is a distinct, 
infinite mind, a mind with a consciousness of its 
own, and as the Athanasian creed teaches that 
the three divine persons are co-equal and co- 
eternal, it follows that the Holy Spirit is a being, 
a person or individual with distinct conscious- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED 47 

ness, with infinite mind and eternal existence; 
and what is such a being but God? And if 
there are three such beings or persons, there are 
three Gods, and that is the conclusion which 
follows legitimately from the premise that there 
are three persons in the divine nature. We do 
not say that our Trinitarian friends believe in 
three Gods. We know that they do not. Fortu- 
nately for them, the unity of God is so plainly 
taught in the Scriptures, presented in such un- 
mistakable terms, that thev are saved from the 
tritheistic conclusion to which the doctrine of 
three persons, i. e. three distinct, infinite minds, 
would necessarily lead them. They have reason 
to thank God that the Bible preserves them 
from. the last, the legitimate results of what is 
popularly, but incorrectly, termed Athanasian 
Trinitarianism. Their faith in the Word of 
God, like a guardian angel, has held them back 
from the conclusion to which the words of men 
would inevitably have driven them. Their faith 
indeed saves them, but, in saving them, utterly 
destroys their argument. 

Sometimes an attempt is made to invalidate 
such reasoning as we have presented, by assum- 
ing that in some mysterious way these three are 



48 UNITARIAN VrEWS VINDICATED. 

united into one being. The attempt is vain. 
That assumption throws a blinding, deluding 
mist over the subject, but it does not in the 
slightest degree affect the soundness of our ar- 
gument. Nor is the force of the argument im- 
paired by the assertion to which men are driven 
by the difficulties of the Trinitarian hypothesis 
— that the whole subject of the divine nature 
and existence is far beyond human comprehen- 
sion. None admit more readily than Unitarians 
that no finite mind can fully comprehend the in- 
finite mind. But then we say to our Trinitarian 
friends, if you feel and admit the subject to be 
incomprehensible, cease dogmatizing upon it. 
If your words and propositions in reference to it 
are confessedly poor, inadequate, unsatisfactory, 
do not try to impose them upon us. And, 
moreover, we say, do not take refuge behind the 
incomprehensibility of the subject, for the sake 
of shielding yourselves from the difficulties which 
you yourselves have created. The only way in 
which that argument can be invalidated is to 
affirm that by personality personality is not 
meant, but something else, and that something 
else a thing about which no one, no finite being, 
knows anything. This is the mode employed 



UNIT IRIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 49 

by the reviewer. He says pp, 22, 23, "we must 
not be understood as denying that the Deity 
has personality. We only deny that it has been 
or can be predicated of the Trinity in the same 
sense that it can be of each member thereof. 
If, in its ordinary application, it be applicable to 
the whole, then it is not so to the constituents." If, 
then, the term personality be applied to each 
member of the Trinity in some other than its 
ordinary signification, what is that signification? 
The reviewer does not state. Nay more, he 
gives his readers to understand that no one can 
state. "No one has ever succeeded in stating, 
affirmatively, what the distinction and what 
the relation between the sacred Three is." p. 24. 
He quotes, moreover, from Professor Stuart, 
"whose profound and scholarly treatise on the 
Trinity presents the strongest scriptural argu- 
ment possible in its defense," the following state- 
ment: "The word person was introduced into 
the creeds of ancient times merely as a term 
which would express the disagreement of Chris- 
tians in general with the reputed errors of the 
Sabellians and others of similar sentiment, who 
denied the existence of any real distinction in 
the Godhead and asserted that Father, Son, and 
6 



50 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

Holy Ghost were merely attributes of God/' &c. 
With great pertinency might the reviewer have 
quoted in this connection the language of a man 
of profounder intellect and greater authority, 
though not a better man, not a truer Christian, 
than Professor Stuart. Difficult indeed would 
it be to find one, any where, in whom large at- 
tainments and general scholarship were more 
beautifully combined with Christian piety and 
humility, than in him, whom in many respects we 
may fitly term the American Neander. Augus- 
tine, in his treatise on the Trinity, says: "In 
truth, since the Father is not the Son, and the 
Son is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit, who 
is also called the gift of God, can neither be the 
Father nor the Son, there are at any rate three; 
yet, when it is asked ivhat three? straightway 
great poverty weighs upon human speech ; yet 
we say, three persons, not because that is what 
should be said, but that we may not keep silence." 
Perhaps in such a case it would be wiser to keep 
silence. 

The reviewer, then, when he uses the term 
' personality,' does not mean personality, but 
something else, some distinction in the God- 
head, which " no one has ever succeeded in sta- 



UNITARIAN TIEWS VINDICATED. 51 

95 



ting affirmatively, and yet he would withhold 
the Christian name from Unitarians, who, he 
knows, heartily believe in the Holy Spirit, be- 
cause attaching to the word personality its legit- 
imate meaning — a meaning which so orthodox a 
believer as Sherlock pronounces its true mean- 
ing — they deny the applicability of the term to 
the Holy Spirit. Let the reviewer state the 
doctrines held by him and those who agree with 
him, in intelligible terms ; let him employ those 
terms always in the same sense — not giving now 
one and now another signification, to meet some 
special exigency and to save himself from a tri- 
theistic conclusion ; and let him show that the 
doctrines thus stated are plainly taught in the 
Scriptures, and then if Unitarians deny those 
doctrines, he may, with some grace, deny them 
the Christian name. Until then, Christian char- 
ity, to say nothing of Christian justice, would 
seem to indicate the propriety of recognizing as 
fellow-believers and as members of the same great 
family, those who, he has no reason to doubt, love 
the gospel with as warm an affection as glows in 
hi3 own heart, and are as sincerely desirous as 
any who belong to the fold of the great Shep- 
herd, of learning the truth as it is in Jesus. But 



53 UNITARIAN YIEWS VINDICATED. 

whether the name be given or withheld by their 
fellow-Christians matters little to Unitarians. 
Grateful to the Saviour for the revelation of the 
great, the inestimable truth of the Holy Spirit, 
that truth which brings the infinite Jehovah 
from the throne of the universe near to the heart 
of even the lowliest child, which assures us that 
the spirit of mortal man can be visited by the 
spirit of the good God, and can be strengthened in 
the time of moral weakness, enlightened in the 
season of darkness, comforted in sorrow's trying 
hour, and thus be carried through life's tempta- 
tions and perplexities and be prepared for the 
purity and bliss of the spiritual world ; grateful 
for this truth of truths and for the promise so 
graciously vouchsafed that the Holy Spirit shall 
be given to every one who earnestly seeks it — 
that Spirit which imparts the knowledge of the 
only true God and of his beloved Son, and which 
is the fountain of spiritual life to the church of 
Christ as well as to individual men — Unitarian 
Christians will cherish this truth more and more, 
and will seek with ever-increasing e igerness for 
the blessing divinely promised. And in welcom- 
ing this truth to their hearts they believe that 
they are in harmony with the great mass of ear- 



UNITARIAN TIJfiWS VINDICATED. 53 

nest, devout Christians of every name, to whom, 
whatever may be their variety of speculations 
about the truth of the Holy Spirit, it is that truth 
itself which is dear, and which, cordially embraced, 
leads to that true, heart-felt service, " that inward 
service/' which, as Neander says, " proceeds from 
the consciousness of communion with God obtain- 
ed through Christ, the Son of God, and of par- 
ticipation of his Spirit, the spirit of child-like 
relation to God, the spirit of adoption and of 
love." — (Planting and Training of the Christian 
Church, page 260.) 

3d. The reviewer assumes that Unitarianism 
is not entitled to the Christian name because it 
denies the atonement of Christ. We have al- 
ready shown that the Report, so tar from deny- 
ing the doctrine of atonement or reconciliation, 
expressly affirms it, but the topic is one of pro- 
found interest, and, therefore, we return to it. 

The doctrine of atonement, or reconciliation 
— for, as every render of the Scriptures knows, 
the word atonement occurs but once in the New 
Testament, Romans v. 11, and then is the same 
word elsewhere translated reconciliation, and, in 
the old English use of the term, atonement or 
at-one-nient and reconciliation were frequently 



54 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

used as synonymous terms — the doctrine of 
atonement or reconciliation is not only a Chris- 
tian doctrine, but one of the most deeply inter- 
esting, vital, and characteristic doctrines of Chris- 
tianity. "All things are of God, who hath rec- 
onciled us to himself by Jesus Christ and hath 
given to us the ministry of reconciliation ; to 
wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world 
unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto 
them, and hath committed unto us the word of 
reconciliation." — 2 Cor. v. 18, 19. Here is the 
doctrine presented strongly, distinctly, but with 
no more strength and distinctness than in many 
other passages. The great doctrine, the glorious 
truth, shines out from the New Testament with 
the brightness of the mid-day sun. And this 
truth Unitarians are charged with denying. As 
soon would they think of denying that the fath- 
erhood of God is a doctrine of Christianity, as 
of denying that the doctrine of atonement or 
reconciliation is a Christian doctrine. Deny it ! 
To no Christians is it dearer — by none is it re- 
garded with profounder interest. To them Chris- 
tianity is pre-eminently a religion of reconcilia- 
tion. Deny it ! What do they deny ? That 
" God so loved the world, that he gave his only- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 55 

begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish but have everlasting life " ? 
No ; by none are these words of the Saviour, all 
fragrant as they are with heavenly love, more 
heartily welcomed, by none are they more highly 
valued, than by Unitarian Christians, Deny it ! 
Do they deny that " in this was manifested the 
love of God toward us, because God sent his only- 
begotten Son into the world, that we might live 
through him " ? Into no hearts do these words 
of the beloved disciple sink deeper than into the 
hearts of Unitarian Christians. Deny it ! Do 
they deny that "it is better, if the will of God be 
so, that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil- 
doing, for Christ also hath once suffered for sins, 
the just for the unjust, that he might bring us 
to God"? No; for by none are these words of 
St. Peter, so rich at once in instruction and con- 
solation, more cordially welcomed than by Uni- 
tarian Christians. These words, and all the 
words of Holy Writ, in which the heart-moving, 
hope-kindling doctrine is presented, are to them 
of priceless value, freighted as they are with the 
heavenly assurance of pardon and peace. 

What, then, do Unitarians deny ? Certainly 
not the Christian doctrine of atonement or rec- 



56 UNITARIAN YIEWS VINDICATE©. 

onciliation. But they do deny, and with all ear- 
nestness protest against, the doctrine that the 
atonement was a display of the wrath of God, or 
that it was needed and designed to make God 
willing to forgive. This they protest against as 
a doctrine at utter variance with the doctrine of 
St. John, " herein is love, not that we loved God, 
but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the 
propitiation for our sins;" with the thrilling dec- 
laration found in Ezekiel xxxiii. 11, " As I live, 
saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death 
of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his 
his way and live;" with the declaration of the 
Psalmist, Ps. cxlv. 8, that " the Lord is gracious 
and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great 
mercy;" and with all those passages, in which 
both the Old and New Testaments abound, which 
present the King of kings as the heavenly Fa- 
ther — as a God of infinite love. 

Unitarians do not deny the great, the vital, 
truths presented in what may be called the sacri- 
ficial passages of the Bible, such as : u For this 
is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed 
for many for the remission of sins." — Matt. xxvi. 
26. "Jesus Christ, the righteous, is the propi- 
tiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



also for the sins of the whole world." — 1 John, 
i: 1, 2. " Then saith he, lo, I come to do thy 
will, God. By the which will we are sanctified 
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ 
once for all." — Heb. x: 9, 10. But they do 
deny and repel with horror that doctrine of im- 
putation which Luther brought out with appall- 
ing distinctness when he declared that under 
" the burden of the imputed sins of mankind 
Christ became the greatest transgressor, murder- 
er, adulterer, thief, rebel, and blasphemer that 
ever was or could be in all the world." To them 
the doctrine which justifies a believer in it in 
making such a statement — a statement sufficient 
to chill the blood as it courses through the veins — 
seems as odious to reason and affection as it is 
directly antagonistic to the explicit assertions of 
the Bible, and to the spirit which pervades the 
sacred volume, which teaches that God is a being 
of perfect truth and justice, who looks upon the 
guilty as guilty and upon the innocent as inno- 
cent, and who always regarded his only-begotten 
Son with infinite affection, and who surely never 
could have regarded Jesus as more worthy of that 
affection, than when, in obedience to the dictates 
7 



58 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

of heavenly love, he willingly submitted to a 
cruel, agonizing death. 

"The doctrine of the death of Christ/' says 
the reviewer, "being a ' substitution' for the 
death of sinning men is the foundation-stone of 
the Christian religion." By this the reviewer, 
as he explicitly states, means that Christ died 
instead of men. Died instead of men ! What 
kind of death does he mean ? Is it physical 
death ? But have not men died since our Sa- 
viour met his cruel death ? Has a single human 
being been exempt from the great law of mortal- 
ity? Then not in this sense has Christ died 
instead of men. 

Is it spiritual death ? Does the reviewer co- 
incide with Calvin and hold what an earnest 
writer, who claims to be a sincere believer in the 
doctrine of the atonement, calls the tru]y horri- 
ble doctrine, that " Christ descended into hell 
when crucified and suffered the pains of the 
damned for three days"? Is it thus that he 
interprets the third of the Thirty-nine Articles of 
his church ? Does he hold a view according to 
which, to quote again from the eloquent writer 
just referred to, Dr. Bushnell, u God will have his 
modicum of suffering some how — if he lets the guil- 



UNITARIAN YIEWS TTNDICATEB. 59 

ty go, will yet satisfy himself out of the innocent? 
In which the divine government, instead of clearing 
itself, assumes the double ignominy, first of let- 
ting the guilty go, and secondly of accepting 
the sufferings of innocence ! In which, Calvin, 
seeing no difficulty, is still able to say, when ar- 
guing for Christ's three days in hell — ^it was 
requisite that he should feel the severity of the 
divine vengeance, in order to appease the wrath 
of God and satisfy his justice.' " 

"We trust that this is not what the reviewer 
means by < substitution.' We trust that he does 
not hold a doctrine which seems to us so utterly 
unsanctioned by Scripture, so repugnant to rea- 
son and justice. But we confess we know not 
what he does mean — what any one means — by 
declaring that Christ died instead of men. We 
can understand, and most heartily do we believe, 
that Christ died for us, in our behalf, for our 
sake. This is the scriptural representation, and 
a most affecting representation it is, of a vital, 
essential truth. 

The death of Christ Unitarians do not regard 
as a literal sacrifice. It was upon no altar, but 
upon a cross, that Jesus died; and he was not 
put to death by officers of religion and with reli- 



60 UNITARIAN YIEWS VINDICATED. 

gious rites, but he was basely, foully murdered 
by cruel men. But th<vy do not deny that on 
the part of Jesus it was a real sacrifice, an offer- 
ing of himself, that he voluntarily died, the just 
for the unjust, to bring us unto God, and that in 
the providence of God his death is intimately 
connected with the redemption of the world. As 
they look to the cross, and behold the meek and 
holy One, God's well-beloved Son, enduring the 
agonies of a terrible death, they witness such an 
exhibition of the utter malignity of sin, as was 
never made before, and "has never been made 
since ; and as they hear his voice breathing forth 
amid those agonies the prayer for his murderers, 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do," their hearts are touched and melted, 
as the hearts of their fellow- Christians have al- 
ways been; as all hearts, capable of emotion, 
must ever be touched and melted by this reve- 
lation of divine love ; and in reverence and gra- 
titude they are ready to join with St. Paul in 
declaring that " God commendeth his love toward 
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died 
for us ; " and that " neither death, nor life, nor 
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor thing.? 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 61 

depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to 
separate us from the love of God, which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord," 

Let, then, the reviewer and those whose reli- 
gious opinions accord with his, say, if they will, 
that they regard the Unitarian theory of the 
atonement as unsatisfactory; let them say as of- 
ten as they will and wherever they will that Uni- 
tarians deny the so-called orthodox theory of the 
atonement; but let them not say that Unitarians 
deny the atonement, for to none is this great 
Christian doctrine dearer, and none more fervent- 
ly desire than they to understand the doctrine 
fully, and to have their hearts through Christ re- 
conciled unto God, their sins pardoned, and their 
lives brought into harmony with his holy will. 
Most heartily can we respond to the words of 
Neander, whose piety and Christian soundness 
few would venture to impugn, when speaking, in 
his History of the Christian church vol. 1, p. 640, 
of the language of the early fathers in regard to 
the work of Christ as the Redeemer, and having 
stated that in their language we find "all the el- 
ments which lie at the basis of the doctrine as it 
afterwards came to be defined in the church," he 
goes on to characterize these elements,as "ground- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS* VINDICATED. 



ed in the Christian consciousness itself, and in- 
dicating how Christ manifested himself to the 
religious feelings and to the intuitions thence 
resulting, as a deliverer from sin and its conse- 
quences, a restorer of harmony in the moral order 
of the universe, a bestower of divine life to human 
nature" This beautiful and striking representa- 
tion of the nature of Christ's work of redemp- 
tion we gladly accept as perfectly accordant with 
the teachings of the sacred Volume, and as en- 
tirely satisfactory to the deep emotions of the 
Christian heart. 

Very gratifying is it to know that the best 
thinkers in the Christian church have expressed 
themselves upon this, as upon other important 
topics, without dogmatism and without denunci- 
ation. Thus speaks the great and good Bishop 
Butler, whose "Analogy of Religion" reminds 
one of the coat of armor, the " ring-cuirass," 
worn by the knight of old, every thought strong 
as steel, and all the thoughts riveted firmly, 
compactly together. ' Some have endeavored 
to explain the efficacy of what Christ has done 
and suffered for us, beyond what the scripture 
has authorised; others, probably because they 
could not explain it, have been for taking it away, 



UWTAPJLAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 63 

and confining his office, as Redeemer of the 
world, to his instruction, example, and govern- 
ment of the church: whereas the doctrine of the 
gospel appears to be, not only that he taught 
the efficacy of repentance, but rendered it of the 
efficacy which it is, by what he did and suffered 
for us: that he obtained for us the benefit of 
having our repentance accepted unto eternal life; 
not only that he revealed to sinners that they 
were in a capacity of salvation, and how they 
might obtain it; but, moreover, that he put them 
into this capacity of salvation by what he did 
and suffered for them; put us into a capacity of 
escaping future punishment and obtaining future 
happiness. And it is our wisdom thankiiilly to 
accept the benefit, by performing the conditions 
upon which it is offered on our part, without dis- 
puting how it was procured on his." (Analogy 
part ii. 172.) To words thus uttered it is a plea- 
sure and a privilege to listen, and the thoughts, 
which they express cannot but be regarded with 
profound interest by every serious and earnest 
mind. 

4th. Unitarianism is pronounced non-Christ- 
ian, by the reviewer, because it denies " original 
or birth sin." What is " original or birth sin ? ' 



64 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



Let us understand exactly what is meant by 
this expression, and then we can say whether 
the doctrine intended to be presented in the ex- 
pression, is denied or not ; for, as we all know, 
much of the difference among Christians is at- 
tributable to the misunderstanding, or non-un- 
understanding of the terms employed by them. 

The expression " birth sin," though much 
employed by theologians, we are frank to say, 
seems to us, in itself considered, to be an abso- 
lutely-unintelligible, because self-contradicting, 
expression. " Birth sin." Why, what is sin ? 
Take the definition given by Professor Stuart, 
whose orthodoxy the reviewer, as we have seen, 
estimates very highly, that it is " the voluntary 
transgression of a known law of God, by a re- 
sponsible being." This is a just and satisfactory 
definition. Understand sin in this sense, and 
the expression, " birth sin," becomes meaning- 
less ; for, if sin is a voluntary transgression of 
a known law of God, then, of course, no one is 
to be viewed as a sinner until he is guilty of 
such transgression — i. e. until he actually sins 
whereas, the term " birth sin " would seem to 
imply that a man is a sinner by birth, by virtue 
of the nature which he inherits, even before he 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 65 

is guilty, either in purpose or in act, of any 
transgression. In other words, he is a sinner 
before he sins, or has any intention of sinning ; 
a proposition rejected at once by common sense 
and common humanity. Is thore a man living, 
who, whatever his theology may be, regards an 
infant, smiling in its mother's arms, as a sinner, 
and as obnoxious to the punishment due a sin- 
ner ? No man, with the head of a man, and the 
heart of a man, can thus regard that young and 
guileless being. We therefore regard the ex- 
pression, " birth sin," as self-contradictory ; and 
we take it for granted that the doctrine, which 
it is employed to present, cannot be that which 
on its face it seems to present, and which it 
must present, if the word " sin " be used in its 
legitimate signification. But if we are mistaken 
in our inference, if the expression is used to 
teach the doctrine that the human being is a 
sinner before he transgresses, or is capable of 
trangressing, the law of God, a sinner by virtue 
of the nature inherited, then we reject it, and 
protest against it, as not only repulsive to com- 
mon sense, and common humanity, but as di- 
rectly antagonistic to the teaching of our Sa- 
viour, when, taking little children in his arms, he 



66 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

pronounced his blessing upon them, and declared 
"of such is the kingdom of heaven." 

Again. When the term " birth sin " is em- 
ployed, is it employed for the purpose of teach- 
ing that man inherits a nature so utterly cor- 
rupt and vile, that he is altogether prone to evil, 
and altogether hostile to good ? If this be the 
doctrine taught, the reviewer is right in assert- 
ing that Unitarians deny it. How can they help 
denying it, when an inspired apostle expressly 
asserts, that " when the Gentiles, which have 
not the law, do by nature the things contained 
in the law, these having not the law, are a law 
unto themselves, which shew the work of the 
law written in their hearts." — Rom. ii. 14, 15. 
What ! do by nature the things contained in the 
law, when that nature renders them utterly 
averse to all things contained in the law, and 
utterly incapable of doing them ? St. Paul was 
never the man to reason in that inconsequential 
way. Very false would Unitarians be to them- 
selves, and to their veneration for the religion of 
Jesus, if they did not reject a doctrine which 
seems to them to stand in direct antagonism to 
the teaching of his own inspired and commis- 
sioned apostles ; and, also, directly to impugn 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED 67 

the justice of God. For, as stated in the Re- 
port, to create a being with a nature wholly 
inclined to evil, and then require of him an obe- 
dience which his nature makes him incapable of 
rendering, w r ould be injustice, tyranny. 

"But," says the reviewer, "no one has ever said 
that God made man with a nature wholly inclined 
to evil " — Review, p. 137, and he, moreover, says 
" we do not believe with this Committee, that 
6 God made us as we are, imperfect and liable to 
sin.'" Rather noticeable declarations, these. "No 
one has ever said that God made man with a 
nature wholly inclined to evil." The reviewer 
surely does not mean to assert that no one has 
ever said that man's nature is wholly inclined to 
evil, for he is endeavoring to prove Unitarians 
unworthy of the Christian name, because of 
their rejection of this doctrine. His position, 
then, must be that no one ever said that God 
made man with such a nature. But does not the 
reviewer believe that God is the creator of every 
man ? Does he believe that God only created 
one man, and deny that He has created all other 
men? We have been accustomed to regard 
Him as the creator of all men ; and we have 
supposed that the prophet Malachi, ii. 10, quite 



68 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

clearly indicates that this is the correct view, 
when he says, " have we not all one father ? 
Hath not one God created us ? ' If we were 
wont to stigmatize our fellow-Christians as some 
of them are wont to stigmatize us, we might say 
that to deny that God is the creator of all men, 
is to deny a very plain doctrine of the Bible, and 
to assume a very heretical position. But it is 
neither our custom nor our wish, to attach odious 
epithets to men, whom we have every reason to 
believe sincere in their profession of love for 
Christianity, because of their differing in opin- 
ion or interpretation from us ; and, moreover, 
we regard the word "heretic," in the manner 
in which it is commonly used, as altogether un- 
Protestant, and un-American. Most cordially 
do we assent to the words of that eminent schol- 
ar and large-minded man, George Campbell, D. 
D., of Aberdeen, at the close of his ninth Pre- 
liminary Dissertation : " I shall conclude with 
adding to the observations on the words schism 
and heresy, that however much of a schismatical 
or heretical spirit, in the apostolic sense of the 
term, may have contributed to the formation of 
the different sects into which the Christian 
world is at present divided, no person, who, in 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



the spirit of candor and charity, adheres to that 
which, to the best of his judgment, is right, 
though in this opinion he should be mistaken, 
is in the scriptural sense either schismatic or 
heretic ; and that he, on the contrary, whatever 
sect he belong to, is more entitled to these 
odious appellations, who is most apt to throw the 
imputation upon others. Both terms — for they 
denote only different degrees of the same bad 
quality — always indicate a disposition and prac- 
tice unfriendly to peace, harmony, and love." 

The other assertion, is equally remarkable — 
that God did not make man imperfect and liable 
to sin. Not liable to sin, If Adam was not liable 
to sin, pray, how did he sin : how could he sin ? 
This is a strange view. Here is a man, the first 
man, who certainly did sin; the consequences of 
whose sin we all feel and lament ; and yet, ac- 
cording to the position taken by the reviewer, 
he was created perfect, without liability to sin. 

Now, it may be, that owing to our want of 
acumen, to our dullness in regard to subjects of 
abstruse, metaphysical nature, we cannot un- 
derstand what is intelligible enough to more 
acute minds ; but, really, we must confess, hu- 
miliating as the confession may seem, that it 



70 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

baffles us to comprehend how a perfect being — 
a being Tree from liability to sin, could sin. To 
our simplicity, this appears more than a mystery, 
a complete paradox. 

And, moreover, admitting that in some, to 
us incomprehensible, way it is possible that a 
perfect being, without liability to sin, can sin, 
this view seems to us to present that being, per- 
fect as he was, as really a weaker and worse be- 
ing than any of his descendants ; for they have 
a nature which all Christians admit to have been 
weakened, impaired, marred by transmitted evil 
tendencies, and which some, many Christians 
represent as utterly corrupt and vile, a nature 
which renders them liable to sin, while he, a 
perfect being, sinned, although he had no liability 
to sin ! 

But, to come directly to the main point, as to 
what is meant by " birth sin." We suppose that 
the reviewer has given his definition of it in the 
following words, which form part of a sentence 
on page 137 : " We believe that i God made 
man upright ; } that man fell into sin, and thus 
corrupted his posterity, who inherited sin from 
Adam just as they would have inherited scrofu- 
la." " To inherit sin." This expression, if we 



UOTTARIAK VIEWS VINDICATED. 71 



are to take Professor Stuart's definition, and re- 
gard " sin as a voluntary transgression of a 
known law of God, by a responsible being," 
seems to us a solecism ; for how can a man in- 
herit that which, as far as he is concerned, cannot 
be until he has actually purposed or done it ? 
But probably the reviewer means by sin, sinful 
tendencies ; and if this is what he means, then 
he has less occasion than he imagines, for deny- 
ing the Christian name to Unitarians. They do 
not deny that sinful tendencies are inherited ; 
nor, on the other hand, do they deny that good 
tendencies are inherited. They believe that 
men are, as the Report states, imperfect and 
liable to sin ; and they believe, moreover, as 
the Report also states, though the reviewer 
seems not to have understood the statement — 
for he has entirely, though we hope unintention- 
ally, misrepresented its purport — that they have 
a nature, which, with God's gracious and kindly 
assistance, renders them capable of religious obe- 
dience. Few Unitarians would dissent from the 
view presented by Neander, in his History of 
the Planting and Training of the Christian 
Church, page 240, of the doctrine of St. Paul, 
in regard to human nature. "Paul certainly 



72 UNITARIAN VIEWS TINDICATED. 

represents a corruption of human nature as 
the consequence of the first sin, and admits a 
supremacy of the sinful principle in the human 
race ; but not in such a manner that the original 
nature of man, as the offspring of God, and 
created in his image, has been thereby destroyed. 
Rather he admits the existence in man of two 
opposing principles — the predominating sinful 
principle, and the divine principle depressjd and 
obscured by the former, yet still more or less 
manifesting its heavenly origin." It is this "di- 
vine principle" which Unitarians believe the Sa- 
viour came to raise from its depression, to bring 
out of its obscurity, and make the ruling, living, 
illumining principle of our nature, that man, re- 
deemed from the thraldom of sin, may walk 
abroad in the glorious liberty of the sons of 
God, the liberty wherewith Christ makes man 
free, 

5th. The reviewer pronounces Unitarianism 
non-Christian, because of its denial of "the Deity 
of Christ." 

The Deity of Christ ! What are we to un- 
derstand by the term — Deity ? Webster defines 
it, 1st. " Godhead-divinity ; the nature and es- 
sence of the Supreme Being." And 2d. u God, 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 73 

the Supreme Being, or infinite self-existing Spir- 
it," When, then, " Deity " is predicated of any 
person, that person is presented to us as pos- 
sessed of the nature and the essence of the Su- 
preme Being ; or, in other words, he is presented 
as God, with all the attributes of God. With 
all the attributes, we say ; for, if possessed of 
but a portion of them, he cannot, with any pro- 
priety, be called by the name Deity. To ascribe 
Deity to a person, and then deny him even one 
of the attributes of Deity, is simply to play 
fast and loose with an expression, to use words 
as Talleyrand is said to have used them, for the 
purpose of concealing thought ; for Deity, with- 
out all the attributes of Deity, is no Deity. 
The word is a misnomer. 

When, then, Deity is predicated of Christ, 
the expression means, if it means anything, that 
Christ is God — the Supreme God, possessed of 
all the attributes of the Supreme God. To say 
that this is not what is meant by the expression, 
and that when Deity is predicated of him, he is 
not pronounced the Supreme God, but God in 
some other sense, a derived, subordinate God, is 
simply to throw dust in the mental eyes of 
men ; for, to Christians, all of whom profesg to 



74 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

believe that there is " but one God, and none 
other but he/' how can there be any subordinate 
God? When, then, men ascribe Deity to Christ, 
they must take one of two positions — either 
they must say with Swedenborg, that Jesus 
Christ is veritably the Supreme God, or, they 
must say, that, when they use the term Deity, 
they do not mean Deity, but something else. 
This second position is the position virtually ta- 
ken by the reviewer, and of that we shall speak 
presently ; but now we call the reader's atten- 
tion to the other, viz : that when men ascribe 
Deity to Christ, they declare him to be the Su- 
preme God, possessed of all the attributes of 
the Supreme God. This doctrine, Unitarian 
Christians, in all ages and in all lands, deny. 
Not only do they deny it, but they protest 
against it, as in their opinion, utterly at variance 
with, directly antagonistic to, the great funda- 
mental doctrine of the Old and the New Testa- 
ments, the doctrine of the strict unity, and the 
sole supremacy of Jehovah, the one God, 

They deny it because we are expressly taught 
in the holy Scriptures, on the highest authority, 
that there is but one God, and that the Being, 
whom we are directed to call our Father, is that 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 75 

God. The great apostle, St. Paul, says, 1 Cor. 
viii. 6, " To us there is but one God, the Fa- 
ther, of whom are all things, and we in him ; 
and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all 
things, and we by him." How could language 
be clearer, stronger, more decisive ? " To us 
there is but one God> the Father." 

Equally explicit is the language of him, one 
authoritative declaration of whom is worth more 
— if our reverence would permit us for a mo- 
ment to compare the words of him, who spake 
as never man spake, with the words of fallible 
men — than all the creeds that have ever been 
formed; — creeds formed for the most part by men 
who have endeavored to be wise above what was 
written, and thus "have darkened counsel by 
words without knowledge," In the solemn 
prayer recorded in the seventeenth chapter of 
the gospel according to St. John, our Saviour 
says, in the third verse, " This is life eternal, 
that they might know thee the only true God, 
and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Surely 
no words can be plainer, more decisive, than 
these. Here we have the declaration of our Lord, 
in the most solemn manner in which it can be 
given, that the Being to whom he addressed his 



76 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

earnest petition, and to whom he taught his dis- 
ciples to pray, "is the only true God*" The Trin- 
itarian formula is, that Jesus Christ, and the 
Holy Spirit — two distinct persons according to 
that formula — must unite with a third person, 
the Father, to form the one true God. The ex- 
press assertion of our Saviour is, that the Fa- 
ther is the only true God. Take who will, the 
formula, we take the declaration of Jesus. On 
this we stand ; and, standing on this, we stand 
firmly. We feel that we rest upon the authority 
of the Rock of Ages. This sublime prayer must 
be torn out of the gospel of the beloved disci- 
ple ; every hallowed and hallowing remembrance 
of it must be obliterated from the memory of 
man, before we can cease to believe that " the 
Father is the only true God ; " and, so long as 
we believe this great fundamental truth, will it 
be impossible for us to believe in the " deity ' : 
of Christ — i. e. to believe that Christ is the Su- 
preme God. 

And in this connection we may remark that it 
is to us incomprehensible, that our Episcopalian 
friends, with this prayer of our Saviour before 
them, and with this explicit declaration, "when ye 
pray, say, our Father," also before them, should 



UNITARIAN TIEWS YINDICATBD. 77 

permit their solemn and beautiful service — most 
of the prayers in which are truly scriptural, be- 
ing addressed to the heavenly Father, through 
his Son, — to be marred with that utterly unscrip- 
tural form of petition in the Litany : " Oh Holy, 
blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and 
one God, have mercy upon us miserable sin- 
ners." We need not adopt the strong lan- 
guage of John Calvin, "I dislike this vulgar 
prayer, 'Holy Trinity, one God! have mercy on 
us!' as altogether savoring of barbarism;" but 
this we must say, without presuming to judge 
our fellow Christians, that since our Saviour has 
expressly taught us that the Father is the only 
true God, and that to Him we are to pray, we 
should not dare to pray to any other being. Let 
the words of Christ stand, though all litanies 
perish. His are the words of eternal life. 

2d. Unitarians deny the doctrine of the Deity 
of Christ, because he has expressly declared that 
the high powers, which are adduced by Trinita- 
rians in proof of his Deity, were given unto him, 
not being his originally, and because he has ex- 
pressly disclaimed the possession of some of the 
attributes essential to Deity. In the closing 
part of St. Matthew's gospel, in the very passage 



78 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

quoted as often as any in proof of the Deity of 
Christ, Jesus expressly declares, ( chap. 28, v. 
18,) "all power is given unto me in heaven and 
in earth." Sometimes the passage is read with 
a strong, overwhelming emphasis upon the words 
'all power,' and with a triumphant tone, indica- 
ting on th e part of the reader, that omnipotence 
is here ascribed to Jesus, and that thus his deity 
is proved. But what will the reader do with the 
expression, "is given '? Was power ever given 
to Jehovah? Is he not in himself omnipotent? 
Could any passage more plainly teach, than this 
famous proof-passage, that Jesus is not original- 
ly the possessor of omnipotence; in other words, 
that he is not the Supreme God ? 

And if we desire a striking, beautiful, and 
satisfactory illustration of the meaning of the 
expression, "all power," we need ask for no other 
than that given by St. Paul in his 1st epistle to 
the Corinthians, when he says, in the fifteenth 
chapter, 24-28 verses, " Then cometh the end, 
when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to 
God, even the Father; when he shall have put 
down all rule and all authority and power. For 
he must reign till he hath put all enemies under 
his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroy- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 79 

ed is death. For he hath put all things under 
his feet. But when he saith, All things are put 
under him, it is manifest that he is excepted 
which did put all things under him. And when 
all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall 
the Son also himself be subject unto him that 
put all things under him, that God may be all 
in all." A very significant and remarkable pas- 
sage is this. Let its language be carefully noted : 
"He is excepted which did put all things under 
him." " Then shall the Son also himself he sub- 
ject unto him that put all things under him, that 
God may be all in all" — language which cannot 
be interpreted to mean anything else than that 
the power which the Son possesses and exercises 
is power not inherent in him, but power derived 
from a Being distinct from him and superior to 
him. The passage is therefore absolutely con- 
clusive against the doctrine of the deity of Jesus. 
It shows, with the clearness and certainty of de- 
monstration, that Jesus is not the Supreme God. 
Thus the divine power possessed by Jesus is ex- 
plicitly declared by himself to be not inherent, 
but derived. Equally positive and decisive is 
his language in regard to his authority as Judge: 
"The Father hath given him authority to exe- 



80 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

cute judgment also, because he is the Son of 
Man." John v. 27, The authority he possesses, 
but, as he plainly teaches, it is not inherent but 
given him by the Father. 

Self-existence is sometimes attributed to the 
Saviour, but his own view we have in the 26th 
verse of this same chapter : "For as the Father 
hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son 
to have life in himself." Like the divine power 
wielded by him, and the divine authority pos- 
sessed by him as Judge, the 'life' which he lives 
is ascribed entirely to the Father. 

The omniscience of Christ is adduced in proof 
of his Deity, but omniscience he explicitly dis- 
claims, Mark xiii. 32, "But of that day and that 
hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which 
are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Fath- 
er." The reader will observe how exact, how 
discriminative this passage is. First, man is 
spoken of, then angels, then the Son, as if 
clearly to indicate his exalted, his super-angelic 
position and nature, and yet, in this high position 
and character, he says, that u of that day and 
that hour he knoweth not." Thus plainly does 
he disclaim omniscience, an attribute which, not- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 81 

withstanding his disclaimer, many of his follow- 
ers have eagerly claimed for him. 

Thus then stands the case. Deity is attribu- 
ted to Christ because of his possession of divine 
powers and attributes. In regard to those pow- 
ers and attributes, Jesus asserts that some of 
them he does not possess, and that those, 
which he does possess, are not his inherently, 
but are given or lent to him by the Father. 
This argument, an argument given to us by the 
Saviour himself, seems to Unitarians complete 
and decisive. They cannot regard Jesus as the 
Supreme God, when Jesus expressly teaches that 
he is not the Supreme God, but that the Father 
is " the only true God," of whom he is the Son. 

To this fundamental doctrine, they firmly and 
constantly adhere ; and, with this doctrine, they 
believe that every sentence, that every word of 
the sacred Scriptures harmonizes. Very ready 
are they to admit that a few passages are to be 
found which are difficult of interpretation — diffi- 
cult of interpretation, not only by Unitarians, 
but by all Christians, as the diversity of explan- 
ations among commentators, unequivocally shows. 
But, whileJJnitarians readily admit the difficulty 
in interpreting such passages, they feel them- 



oj UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

selves justified in asserting — nay, they feel that 
the truth of God, as presented in the Sacred 
Volume, compels them to assert, that there is 
not a passage which is not capable of being in- 
terpreted so as to harmonize entirely with this 
fundamental doctrine ; and that such interpreta- 
tion is the true, the sound interpretation. Take, 
for instance, the introduction to St. John's gos- 
pel, perhaps of all passages the one most fre- 
quently and confidently quoted in proof of 
the Deity of Jesus. Does it teach that doc- 
trine? Is it intended to teach it? Did the sa- 
cred writer mean in that passage to present Je- 
sus as the Supreme God? How can he mean 
this, when he has expressly told us, near the 
conclusion of his gospel, chap. xx. 31, that it 
was written that its readers " might believe that 
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God?" Can * 
we believe that a passage at the commencement 
of St. John's gospel, is designed to prove that 
Jesus is God himself, when St. John informs us 
that he wrote to prove that Jesus is the Son of 
God ? We take it for granted that a writer, at 
any rate that an inspired writer, knows what 
his design is in writing. We take it for granted, 
also, that when such a writer explicitly informs 



UNITARIAN YIEWS VINDICATED. 



us what that design is, when, in other words, he 
gives us the key by which to interpret his writ- 
ings, we are bound to use that key. Using that 
key, we say that that introductory passage does 
not teach, that it is not intended to teach, the 
Deity of Jesus, unless it be one and the same 
thing to prove a person to be God, and to be 
God's Son, a proposition which is not only self- 
contradictory, but which stands in direct opposi- 
tion to the Saviour s declaration, that the Father 
Is the only true God. When, then, St. John de- 
clares that " in the beginning was the Word, and 
the Word was with God, and the Word was 
God ; " and that " the Word was made flesh, 
and dwelt among us," we know what his general, 
all-comprehending purpose was ; for he has told 
us, viz : to present the divine Sonship of Jesus. 
What the special signification of each expression 
is, in view of the great variety of explanations 
which have been given, we cannot say with 
equal confidence, but in all probability we have 
a clue to the exact meaning in our Saviour's reply 
to Philip— John's gospel, chapter xiv. 9, 10. 
Philip had said, ' Lord, shew us the Father, and 
it sufficeth us.' " Jesus saith unto him, Have 
I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



not known me, Philip ? He that hath seen me, 
hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou, 
then, shew us the Father ? Believest thou not 
that I am in the Father, and the Father in 
me? The words that I speak unto you, I 
speak not of myself : but the Father, that dwell- 
eth in me, he doeth the works." This is a 
note-worthy passage. The declaration, " he that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father," literally 
taken would present Jesus, the Son, as the Fath- 
er — a view which no Christians hold, except 
those who adopt the Swedenborgian view. The 
explanation of that declaration our Saviour has 
kindly and thoughtfully given ; k Hhe words that 
I speak unto you, I speak not of myself but the 
Father, that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" 
— i. e., the words that I speak are prompted by 
the divine wisdom and the deeds that I perform 
are done by the divine power dwelling in me. 
It is this divine power and wisdom — the power 
and wisdom of God — which St. John presents 
under the term"6Xoyos" — "the Word," which, 
he says, was in the beginning with God, which 
was never separate from him, which was the 
source of life and light, which from the begin- 
ning has been revealing itself, but which did not 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 85 

make a full revelation of itself until it was man- 
ifested in a human form, and thus drew near to 
men and dwelt among them in all its divine grace 
and truth. And thus this passage presents a 
striking and beautiful illustration of the truth, 
inestimably precious to all Christian hearts, of 
the divine Sonship of Jesus; that through the 
indwelling presence— power and wisdom of God — 
he, the Son, is a full revelation, a complete man- 
ifestation, of the Father. 

Another passage confidently adduced in proof 
of the Deity of Jesus, is found in the epistle to 
the Romans, ninth chapter, fifth verse. " Whose 
are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the 
flesh, Christ came, who is over all God blessed 
for ever. Amen.'* This passage the reviewer 
seems to regard as absolutely conclusive in proof 
that Jesus is God, and declares that "in vain 
will other constructions be put upon this verse." 

Well, if this be so — if this passage cannot 
properly have any other construction and inter- 
pretation — then it teaches that Christ is "the 
supreme God" This is what the reviewer ex- 
pressly claims, page 66, that it does teach, and 
yet he has labored in his Review, from the twen- 
ty-second to the thirty-third page, to prove that 



86 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

the church never held the doctrine that Jesus is 
the supreme God, but has always taught that 
"pre-eminence/' "superiority/' and, a fortiori, 
supremacy, belongs solely to God, the Father ! 
If this be the case, then the church has been very 
untrue to the teachings of the great apostle to 
the Gentiles. 

Again : If in this passage St. Paul teaches 
that Christ is the supreme God, then he teaches 
a doctrine very unlike that taught by him in 
the first epistle to the Corinthians ; for in that 
epistle, as we have already seen, he explicitly 
teaches that the Father, and the Father only, is 
the supreme God. Nay, more ; he teaches a 
doctrine in opposition to that of the Saviour, 
who declares that the Father is "the only true 
God." But no believer in the inspiration of St. 
Paul will suppose it possible for him to have con- 
tradicted himself upon a subject of deepest im- 
portance — much less for him to have spoken 
words at variance with the words of the Saviour. 

One may, then, very pertinently ask, whether 
the construction put upon the passage by the 
reviewer is the only one which it will bear, and 
whether it is or not the proper construction? In 
reply, we give the words of one whose scholar- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED 87 

ship we imagine the reviewer will not impugn — 
the distinguished Erasmus. 

" This passage may be pointed and rendered 
in three different ways : — First, 'Of whom, ac- 
cording to the flesh, is Christ, who is over all. 
God be blessed forever.' Second, ' Of whom, ac- 
cording to the flesh, is Christ, who, being God 
over all, is blessed forever.' And, third, which is 
perfectly suitable to the purport of the discourse, 
' Of whom is Christ according to the flesh;' fin- 
ishing the sentence here and subjoining what 
follows — ' God, who is over all, be blessed forever ' 
— as an ascription of praise for our having re- 
ceived the law, the covenant, and the prophecies, 
and lastly Christ sent in human nature; privi- 
leges which God, by his unspeakable counsels, 
had bestowed for the redemption of mankind. 

Those, therefore, who contend 

that in this text Christ is clearly termed God, 
either place little confidence in other passages of 
Scripture, — deny all understanding to the Arians, 
— or pay scarcely any attention to the style of 
the apostle. A similar passage occurs in 2 Cor. 
xi. 31 : ' The God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who is blessed for ever;' the latter clause 
being undeniably restricted to the Father. If, 



88 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED 

however, the church teaches that Rom. ix. 5 
must be interpreted of the Deity of the Son, the 
church must be obeyed ; though this is not suf- 
ficient to convince heretics, or those who will 
listen only to the words of Sacred Writ : but if 
she were to say that that passage cannot be oth- 
erwise explained in conformity with the Greek, 
she would assert what is confuted by the thing 
itself." — (Erasmus: Annot. in Op., torn. 6. pp. 
610, 611, quoted in Wilson's Concessions of Trin- 
itarians, pp. 426, 427.) 

The remarks of this great scholar in reference 
to another passage, may, with propriety, be quo- 
ted here. The passage is that found in Heb. i, 
8 : " Unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, God, 
is for ever and ever : a sceptre of righteousness 
is the sceptre of thy kingdom." Of this passage 
the reviewer confidently says, " No other trans- 
lation of this verse is for a moment admissible." 
Well, this language is certainly peremptory 
enough to be decisive. In its tone of authorita- 
tiveness it is worthy of any dignitary of Rome. 
But what says Erasmus? "It is uncertain 
which of the following renderings gives the true 
sense: 'Thy throne, God ! is for ever and ever' 
— 4 God himself is thy throne for ever and ever;' 






UNIT IRIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 



for the Greek expression is ambiguous." An- 
other translation, then, is admissible, notwith- 
standing the very positive and authoritative 
language of the reviewer— a translation which, 
in the opinion of the ablest scholars that the 
world has known, is equally faithful to the orig- 
inal, and which has the great advantage of be- 
ing in perfect harmony with the declarations of 
the subsequent passage — "thou hast loved right- 
eousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, 
even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of 
gladness above thy fellows." Is it credible that 
such declarations as these can be made by a sa- 
cred writer in reference to the Supreme Being ? 
Has the Supreme Being a God superior to him- 
self, by whom he is anointed with the oil of glad- 
ness above his fellows? His felloivs! Fellows 
of the Supreme — of Him who is infinitely exalt- 
ed above all beings ! Here certainly is a start- 
ling and painful incongruity — an incongruity 
which all thoughtful minds perceive, and to re- 
move which the reviewer and all who take the 
same position with him are obliged to resort to 
the hypothesis of a double nature in Christ, by 
virtue of which "in the same sentence he could 
with propriety speak of himself as human and 



90 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

divine," — a hypothesis rendered necessary by 
the exigencies of a theology that pronounces 
Jesus God in spite of his own explicit declaration 
that "the Father is the only true God" — a hy- 
pothesis which does not remove the difficulties 
which it is employed to remove, but only hides 
them from sight by covering them with mystery ; 
and which throws doubt and confusion over the 
teachings of him who always presented the truth 
with divine singleness and transparency, as be- 
came the herald of truth and the Son of the God 
of truth. 

Another passage adduced by the reviewer in 
support of the doctrine of the Deity of Christ, is 
that found in the first epistle of St. John, chap. 
v., verse 20 : "And we know that the Son of 
God is come, and hath given us an understand- 
ing, that we may know him that is true : and 
we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus 
Christ. This is the true God and eternal life." 
The reviewer argues that " the last clause of this 
verse refers naturally to its immediate antece- 
dent 'Jesus Christ,' — that the adjective true is 
twice before applied to him in the same verse 
with ' him that is true,' ' in him that is true/ 
'the true God ' — and that the predicate ' eternal 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 91 

life ' is in St John's writings constantly applied 
to Christ, and never to the Father — and that 
therefore Jesus is in this passage called the true 
God and eternal life." In reply to this argu- 
ment, we will give a brief but comprehensive 
statement and lucid exposition from the pen of 
one whose orthodoxy and whose learning the re- 
viewer will not doubt — Grotius. "This is the 
true God; namely, He, and none else, whom 
Jesus hath declared to be the object of worship. 
The pronoun oJto^, this, not unfrequently relates 
to a remote antecedent ; as in Acts vii, 19 ; x. 6. 

" And eternal life : this is said by metonymy. 
The apostle means, that God is the primary and 
chief Author of eternal life. So also Christ is 
called life, John xi. 25 ; xiv. 6 ; because, next 
to God the Father, he is the cause of eternal 
life." — (Annotationes ad Vetus et Novum Tes- 
tamentum, quoted by Wilson, p. 566.) 

Lticke, the distinguished German scholar, in 
his Commentary on the Epistles of John, (Wil- 
son, p. 568,) after giving a similar exposition, 
says: "The meaning of the entire proposition 
is — This is the only true God, and in this only 
(in the knowledge of him, and in the communion 
with him through the Son) consists eternal life." 



99 UNITARIAN TIEWS VINDICATED. 

Such is the explanation given by a distinguished 
Trinitarian scholar, and if any thing additional 
to its intrinsic credibility were needed to con- 
vince us that this is the true explanation, it 
may be found in the fact that St. John, the wri- 
ter of the epistle, was the same who wrote the 
gospel, in which is recorded the declaration of 
our Saviour, xvii. 3, " this is life eternal, that 
they might know thee the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Is it to be 
supposed that he, who in the gospel declares on 
the authority of Christ that the Father is the only 
true God, will declare in his epistle that the Son 
of God is the true God ? 

Another passage adduced in proof of the De- 
ity of Christ is that found in Colossians i. 16, 
17. "For by him were all things created, that 
are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and 
invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, 
or principalities, or powers : all things were crea- 
ted by him, and for him : and he is before all 
things, and by him all things consist." Of this 
text the reviewer remarks, p. 69, with his usual 
and characteristic positiveness, "the application 
of it to a moral creation is too far-fetched to ad- 
mit of argument," Too far-fetched to admit of 



i 



UNITAKIAN TIEWS VINDICATED. 93 

argument! Strong language this, and very con- 
venient language is it to employ, for it decides 
the whole matter at once. But let us see how 
the language of the reviewer comports with the 
language of another Trinitarian writer, whose 
biblical learning is certainly sufficient to entitle 
his opinions to respect. Dr. Bloomfield, in his 
" Critical Digest of the most important Annota- 
tions on the New Testament/' says, " the later 
commentators, and especially the recent ones, 
take the passage to refer to the new and spirit- 
ual creation by Jesus Christ, which, they main- 
tain, is quite correspondent to the context and 
the phraseology of many parallel passages, as 
Eph. i. 10, 11; ii. 10-15; iii. 9, 10; iv. 22-24; 
Col. iii. 10, 11, &c. They particularly dwell on 
the similarity of style and subject matter in this 
and the twin Epistle (to the Ephesians) from 
which it appears that, by the revelation of the 
plan of redemption in the gospel, the angelic 
creation became enlightened as well as subject 
to Christ. This interpretation has been sup- 
ported by all the acuteness and erudition which 
the recent foreign school could bestow upon it, 
especially by Ernesti, Justinus, Grulich, Noes- 
selt, and Heinriehs. There is much to counten- 



94 UNITARIAN YIEWS VI^lDICATEIX 

ance the opinion ; insomuch that even some 
very orthodox divines seem inclined to adopt 
it." It is certainly very much to be regretted, 
that some very orthodox divines should seem in- 
clined to adopt a mode of interpretation, which 
the reviewer pronounces so far fetched as not to 
admit of argument ! Such an unfortunate in- 
clination would appear well-fitted to bring dis- 
credit upon their good sense, if not upon their or- 
thodoxy. We, heretics, cannot, of course, be ex- 
pected to see and fully appreciate the worthless- 
ness and utter inapplicability of a mode of 
interpretation, which has so much to counten- 
ance it, that even some very orthodox divines 
seem inclined to adopt it. 

But, admitting, for the sake of argument, 
that the creation spoken of in this passage, is 
not the "new and spiritual," but the physical 
creation, does it thence follow that the passage 
was intended to teach, and that it necessarily 
does teach, that Jesus was the infinite Jehovah, 
the Supreme God? May he not have been 
God's agent in creation, without being himself 
the original, self-existent Creator? Does not 
St. Paul, the writer of this epistle, speak in the 
most unambiguous and explicit terms in his epis- 



T7NITARIAN YIEWS VINDICATED. 95. 

tie to the Ephesians, iii. 9, of " God, who created 
all things by Jesus Christ ? " 

Very appropriate in this connection, as well 
as admirable in themselves, are the remarks of 
a Trinitarian writer of excellent intellect and 
heart, Rev. George Hill, Principal of St. Mary's 
College, St. Andrews. In his " Lectures in Di- 
vinity," pp. 402, 3, he says, "We have no 
means of judging whether this power — the crea- 
tive power — must be exerted immediately by 
God, or whether it may be delegated by him to 
a creature. It is certain that God has no need 
of any minister to fulfil his pleasure. He may 
do by himself every thing that is done through- 
out the universe. Yet we see that in the ordi- 
nary course of providence he withdraws himself, 
and employs the ministry of other beings ; and 
we believe that, at the first appearance of the 
gospel, men were enabled, by the divine power 
residing in them to perform miracles, i. e. such 
works as man cannot do, to cure the most invet- 
erate diseases by a word, without any applica- 
tion of human art, and to raise the dead. Al- 
though none of these acts imply a power equal 
to creation, yet as all of them imply a power 
more than human, [we place the remainder 



96 UNITARIAN YIEWS VINDICATED. 

of this though t-laden, and thought-awakening 
sentence, in Italics,] they destroy the general 
principle of that argument upon which creation is 
made an unequivocal proof of Deity in Mm who 
creates. And it becomes a very uncertain con- 
jecture, whether reasons perfectly unknown to 
us might not induce the Almighty to exert, by 
the ministry of a creature, powers exceeding in 
any given degree those by which the apostles of 
Jesus raised the dead." Thus wrote one who 
firmly believed in the Deity of Jesus. 

If, then, the passage in the Colossians were 
admitted to refer to the physical creation, it 
would by no means follow that it represents, or 
is intended to represent, Jesus as the self-exist- 
ent Creator, the infinite Jehovah. 

And when we look at the context, we see, as 
in the brightness of noonday — so, at least, it 
seems to us — that the passage could never have 
been intended, by the sacred writer, thus to re- 
present Jesus, Let the reader observe in what 
terms he is spoken of. In the 13th verse, as 
God's " dear Son." In the 14th verse, as " the 
image of the invisible God, the first born of 
every creature" Are such terms as these appli- 
cable to the eternal Jehovah — the Father — the 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED* 



only true God ? Is he his only Son ? is he his 
own image ? is he, the uncreated one, the first 
born of every creat ure ? If they are not appli- 
cable, then the passage, whatever be its inter- 
pretation, does not prove the Deity of Jesus, 
but very distinctly proves his dependence upon 
God — his Sonship. In other words, this passage, 
in'entire harmony with the express words of the 
Saviour, presents the Father as the only true 
God, and Jesus as his Son. 

It is unnecessary to continue our examination 
of the passages which are considered Trinitarian 
proof-texts. Enough has been said to show that 
they are ail capable of being interpreted, and 
that they all should be interpreted so as to har- 
monize with the great fundamental doctrine ex- 
pressly taught by the Saviour, that the Father 
is the only true God, and that he is himself the 
Son of God. 

And, here, it is not inappropriate to allude to 
the fact, which has often been presented and 
commented on, that there is scarcely one, if in- 
deed one, of those proof-texts, which has not 
been interpreted by some one or other Trinitarian 
writer, in entire accordance with the Unitarian 

exposition. This fact certainly possesses much 
10 



98 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATE^. 

interest, and no little weight. But whatever 
importance may be attached to this fact, the 
other fact must be regarded by all as of supreme 
importance — that the doctrine of the sole de- 
ity of the Father and of the Sonship of Je-' 
sus is given to us on the highest authority, 
and in the most decisive terms. The amount 
and strength of the Scripture testimony in 
behalf of this doctrine are indicated in the 
following condensed and comprehensive state- 
ment in "The Unitarian's Answer," by Dr. 
Dewey. " There are seventeen passages in the 
New Testament in which the Father is styled 
one or only God. There are three hundred and 
twenty passages in which he is styled God abso- 
lutely and by way of eminence. There are 
ninety passages in which it is declared that all 
prayers and praises ought to be offered to Him. 
There are above three hundred passages in 
which the Son is declared positively, or by the 
clearest implication, to be subordinate to the 
Father, deriving his being from Him and receiv- 
ing from him his divine power. Of thirteen 
hundred passages in the New Testament, wherein 
the word God is mentioned, not one of them 
necessarily implies a plurality of persons ; while 



UNIT1RIA!* YIEWS VINDICATES. 99 

in the Old Testament there are about two thou- 
sand passages in which the unity of God is either 
positively expressed or clearly implied." 

Such evidence seems to us clear, strong, and 
decisive. It places the doctrine of the unity, 
the supremacy, the sole Deity of the Father on 
immutable and everlasting foundations. 

This doctrine was firmly held, as we believe, 
by the earliest Christians, though the reviewer 
has endeavored to prove that from the beginning 
the church believed and professed the doctrine 
of the Deity of Christ. We will make a few 
quotations from some of the Fathers to illustrate 
the views held by them. No Unitarian, who 
has any acquaintance, even the slightest, with 
the writings of these early Christians, will deny, 
or wish to deny, that lofty terms are applied by 
them to our Saviour. Some do not hesitate to 
apply the name 'God' unto him. This is cheer- 
fully admitted. But in what sense was the 
name 'God ' employed by them, when they at- 
tributed it to Christ ? Did they use it as Chris- 
tians now would use it ? Did they use it in its 
proper, its legitimate, sense, as denoting the self- 
existent, eternal, and infinite Jehovah— the only 
true God ? If they did, then, of course, in ap» 



100 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED 

plying the name 'God' to Jesus, they very clearly 
indicated their belief in his Deity, in the full 
meaning of that term. But if they used it in 
some other sense, and did not mean by it to 
denote the self-existent, eternal, and infinite 
Jehovah, then, of course, their use of it, whether 
frequenter infrequent, does not prove their be- 
lief in the Deity of Jesus. How, then, did they 
use the term? Let the following quotations 
answer. 

Justin Martyr/who wrote about the year A. D. 
140, says "that Jesus was subordinate to the 
Father and minister to his will ; and that the 
Father is the author to him loth of his existence, 
and of his being powerful, and of his being Lord 
and God."— (Dial with Trypho., p. 413.) Here 
we have the express assertion of Justin, that Je- 
sus received from the Father not only his lofty 
titles and divine power, but his very existence ! 
Surely, then, he did not regard Jesus as the self- 
existent and true God. 

Irenseus, bishop of Lyons, in Gaul, A. D. 180, 
is quoted by the reviewer in proof of the belief 
of the early Christians in the Deity of Jesus. 
Let the reader consider the statements made in 
the following quotations, and then say whether 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 101 

he thinks it probable that Irenseus regarded Je- 
sus as "God," in the strict legitimate sense of 
the term. " Our Lord himself, the Son of God, 
acknowledged that the Father only knew the day 
of judgment:" — "Since our Lord is the only 
teacher of truth, we should learn of him, that 
the Father is above all, for the Father, saith he, 
is greater than I. The Father, therefore, is by 
our Lord declared to be superior even in knowl- 
edge, to this end, that we, while we continue in 
this world, may learn to confess God only to 
have perfect knowledge, and resign such ques- 
tions to him:" — "We hold fast the rule of truth 
which is, that there is one God Almighty, who 
created all things through his Word" — "This 
God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
of Him it is that Paul declared, there is one 
God, the Father, who is above all, and through 
all, and in us all." These quotations are taken 
from the first and second books of Irenaeus 
against Heresies, and may be found on the 29 th 
and 30th pages of "Forrest on the Trinity." 
Can any one, after reading passages like these, 
in which the writer plainly asserts that omnis- 
cience and omnipotence are not the attributes 
of Christ, believe that Irenseus regarded Christ 



102 TTNITAR1AS VIEWS VINDICATED. 

as God in the strict, legitimate sense of that 
term ? Are not omniscience and omnipotence 
essential attributes of Deity ? 

Tertullian, born about A. D. 160, is another 
writer whom the reviewer has adduced as afford- 
ing proof that the primitive Christians believed 
in the Deity of Christ. Two quotations will suf- 
fice to show whether or not he regarded Christ 
as "God," in the full significance of that term. 
In answer to the charge that he had taught doc- 
trines inconsistent with the Supremacy or Mon- 
archy of God, he says — "But I, who derive the 
Son from no other original than the substance 
of the Father, supposing him to do nothing but 
by the will of the Father, and to have received 
all his power from the Father, how is it that I 
destroy the belief of the Monarchy which I pre- 
serve in the Son, being delivered by the Father 
to him?" Again he says, "The Son always 
appeared, and the Son always acted, by the au- 
thority and will of the Father ; because theSon 
can do nothing of himself but what he seeth the 
Father do." These quotations very clearly in- 
dicate that however highly exalted Tertullian 
m;iy have regarded Jesus, both in nature and 
position, he was far from regardiug him as " tha 



tTNITAltlAN VIEWS VINDICATES. 103 

Supreme God/' for surely a being who received 
all his power from the Father, cannot have pos- 
sessed all power inherently; and all-power, om- 
nipotence, certainly is an inherent attribute of 
the Deity. 

There is another statement made by this wri- 
ter, well worthy of notice, and which is as fol- 
lows. (The quotation is taken from Clarke's 
Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, London ed., 
p. 126.) Tertullian, in common with some other 
Christian philosophers, in their endeavors to re- 
fine upon the teachings of Christianity, had 
abandoned somewhat the simplicity and transpa- 
rency so characteristic of the sacred writers, and 
had employed new terms — terms suggested by a 
speculative philosophy — which were regarded 
with distrust by plain, unlettered believers. He 
says, " the unlearned people, who are always the 
greatest part of believers, not understanding that 
they ought indeed to believe in one God, but yet 
so as at the same time to take in the economy, 
are frightened at the notion of the economy ,and 
pretending that we teach two or three Gods, but 
that they are worshipers of the One God, perpet- 
ually cry out, 'we hold fast the monarchy ;' " 
(i. e., the supremacy of the One God.) This 



1Q4 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED, 

language is very definite and very significant. 
It shows that so deep-seated and strong was the 
attachment of the early Christians to the doc- 
trine of the unity and supremacy of God — such 
their conviction of the importance of this doc- 
trine, that they regarded with alarm and rejected 
with aversion terms, which seemed to them at 
variance with this fundamental doctrine. What 
clearer indication could we have — what stronger 
proof, of the jealous tenacity with which the 
great mass of Christians clung to the sole Deity 
of Him whom our Saviour declared to be ' the 
only true God.' 

Another early writer, quoted by the reviewer 
to prove that the church has always believed in 
the Deity of Christ, is Origen, born at Alexan- 
dria, about A. D. 185. We rejoice that the re- 
viewer has brought forward this eminent father 
and has spoken of him in terms which show that 
any statement made by Origen possesses great 
weight. He speaks of him "as generally acknowl- 
edged the first biblical scholar of his age." Ori- 
gen, then, in the reviewer's opinion, is an unex- 
ceptionable witness. As such, we cheerfully, 
gladly, accept him. We ask for no better; and 
upon the statement of this very witness, intro- 



UNITARIAN YIEWS VINDICATED. 105 

duced and endorsed by the reviewer, this truly 
accomplished writer and devout Christian, we are 
willing to rest the whole case as to the belief of 
the primitive church in regard to the Deity of 
Christ. 

What, then, are his statements ? Here is one 
of them. First. If the reader will turn to Clarke's 
Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, p. 149, he will 
find the following declaration. " Be it so that 
some among us are so rash as to imagine our 
Saviour to be himself the Supreme God over all; 
yet we do not so, who believe his own words ' my 
Father is greater than I. 5 " No one, certainly, 
can regard this language as ambiguous. Here we 
have an explicit declaration by Origen that in his 
time some, i. e. a few persons only, were so rash 
as to call Jesus the Supreme God. 

In perfect harmony with this statement is the 
exposition of Origen's views, given by the dis- 
tinguished historian Neander, a portion of which 
exposition, found in the first volume of his his- 
tory, pp. 590, 591, we here present. "In con- 
formity with this development of ideas, Origen 
held it to be quite necessary to insist on the ab- 
solute exaltation and superiority of God the Fa- 
ther, so far as his essence is concerned, above 
11 



106 TOITAJtIAN T1EW8 VINDICATED. 

every other existence; just as he was accustom- 
ed, when a Platonist, to consider the highest Sv 
or ' being' as immeasurably superior to all other 
things, and exalted, in its essence, even above 
the vous or * intelligence' itself. It appeared 
to him therefore, something like a profanation of 
the first and supreme essence, to suppose an 
equality of essence or a unity between him and 
any other being whatever, not excepting even 
the Son of God. As the Son of God and the 
Holy Spirit are incomparably exalted above all 
other existences, even in the highest ranks of 
the spiritual world, so high and yet higher is the 
Father exalted even above them. . . . From 
this doctrine he drew the practical inference that 
we are bound to pray to the Father alone, and* 
not to the Son." Neander, then, after going on 
to show that Christ was still to Origen the 
way, the truth and the life, continues his ex- 
position as follows : " He, Origen, recognized 
him as the Mediator from whom alone Christians 
derive their communion with God ; to whom they 
should constantly refer their Christian conscious- 
ness, and in whose name and through whom they 
should always pray to God the Father. He says, 
4 why may it not be expressed in the sense of 



UNITARIAN VIEWS YINDICATEIX 107 

him who said, wherefore callest thou me good? 
There is none good but one, that is God. Why 
prayest thou to me? Thou shouldst pray to the 
Father alone, to whom I also pray. As you learn 
from the holy Scripture, you are not to pray to 
the High Priest ordained for you by the Father, 
to him who has received it from the Father to be 
your Advocate and Intercessor; but you must 
pray through the High Priest and the Intercessor, 
through him who can be touched with your in- 
firmities, having been tempted in all points like 
as ye are, yet, by the gift of God, without sin. 
Learn, then, what a gift you have received from 
my Father, when, by your new birth in me, ye 
have received the spirit of adoption that ye might 
be called sons of God, and my own brethren.' " 

Here, then, we have the explicit testimony of 
Origen, that in his day a few only had the rash- 
ness to imagine Jesus to be the Supreme God, 
and here we have the expression of his own be- 
lief that the Father, even in essence, is immeasur- 
ably superior to the Son, and that to the Father 
alone prayer is to be addressed. 

If the reviewer regards this as orthodoxy, and 
he ought thus to regard it, for Origen is a wit- 
ness whom he himself introduced to prove the 



108 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

orthodoxy of the early Christians, then let him 
act consistently with this opinion. Let him 
cease praying to the Son of God, and let him 
cease from pronouncing his fellow Christians non- 
Christian, because, when they pray, they obey 
the Saviour's command, and say, " Our Father, 
who art in heaven." 

Now we do not feel ourselves called upon to 
defend the philosophical and metaphysical system 
of Origen, for few Christians of the present day, 
of any denomination, would be willing to endorse 
all the speculative opinions of Origen, or any 
other of the early fathers; nor do we intend or 
wish to deny that he at times used the word 
' God' in application to Jesus; but this we say, 
that, with Origen's clear and full explanation of 
his views before us, we know that he used the 
word in altogether a subordinate and secondary 
sense; he himself having explained what that 
sense was when he said, " Jesus zvas a God, but 
not the self-existent God;" and that he did not 
believe in the Deity of Jesus in any legitimate 
sense of the term. For what kind of Deity be- 
longs to a being who is immeasurably inferior to 
the Supreme Being, and to whom even prayer is 
not to be addressed? 



UNITARIAN YIEWS VINDICATED. 109 

The evidence of Origen, then, is strong, deci- 
sive, as to his opinion in regard to the Deity of 
Jesus. That evidence is not only interesting in 
itself, as the evidence of one whom the reviewer 
commends as being, by general consent, "the 
first biblical scholar of his age," but because in 
it we have a fair representation of the prevalent 
tone of thought and feeling among the early 
Christian fathers. They speak of Jesus Christ 
in most exalted terms; some even apply the title 
'God' to him; but as their own definitions and 
explanations clearly show in an altogether second- 
ary and subordinate sense, as denoting divinity, 
not deity, while the name in its full, legitimate, 
unqualified sense, they applied to the Father 
alone. Thus they unequivocally show their be- 
lief in the unity, the supremacy, the sole Deity, 
of the Father, and thus they testify that they 
understood the Scriptures as clearly teaching 
that the Father is the only true God, and that 
Jesus is the Son of God. 

Very interesting, in this connection, is the fol- 
lowing passage, taken from the Christian Exam- 
iner of July, 1836, as showing the views of one 
whom the reviewer has spoken of in terms of 
deservedly high commendation. " Professor Stu- 



110 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

art has recently made some statements on this 
subject, which, coming from such a source, are 
worthy of notice. They occur in the articles on 
Schleiermacher, in the numbers of the Biblical 
Repository and Quarterly Observer for April 
and July, 1825. They are at variance with the 
Professor's former statements relating to the 
opinions of the early Fathers. He thinks them 
more accurate, as they are the result of a more 
intimate acquaintance with the writings of the 
Fathers. The views of the Nicene Fathers, he 
tells us, 'if he understands them, do really and 
effectually interfere with the true equality in 
substance, power and glory, of the three persons 
or distinctions in the Godhead.' The Son and 
Spirit, he says, according to them, are derived 
beings, and derivation implies inferiority. 'A 
derived God,' he says, 'cannot be a self-existent 
God.' The numerical identity of the Father and 
Son, he affirms, was not a doctrine of the ancient 
Fathers. ' Justin,' he observes, ' says in so many 
words that the \*yo g (Son) is different from the 
Father, and another in number' In regard to 
the unity and distinction of the Father and Son, 
he says, ' the zeal of Origen led him to a theory 
in no important respect better than that of Arius.' 



CNITABlAN TOWS TlNPlOATJBi*. Ul 

'Such was the case, too, with Eusebius, the his- 
torian, and Dionysius names the Son a creation 
and work of the Father.' The council of Nice, he 
says, according to Athanasius, < did not mean to 
assert the numerical unity of the Godhead,' and 
much more to the same purpose. The result is, 
that the Fathers generally, before and at the 
council of Nice, asserted the Son to be inferior 
to the Father, and numerically a different being 
from him. So says Professor Stuart." We es- 
pecially commend to the reviewer's attention the 
declaration that Origen, " generally acknowledged 
the first biblical scholar of the age," held a the- 
ory in no important respect better than that of 
Arius! 

And now, in concluding our argument in re- 
gard to the Deity of Christ, we state that the 
reviewer himself, though he would withhold the 
Christian name from Unitarians, because they 
deny the Deity of Christ, virtually admits that 
Deity, in its proper sense, can be predicated alone 
of the Father, and thus virtually denies the ap- 
plicability of the term, in its proper sense, to 
Christ. 

We make this statement deliberately, and we 
can verify it 



112 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

How so? a reader may ask. Does not the 
reviewer, in portions of his essay, speak of Christ 
as the Supreme God — the God over all? Cer- 
tainly he does. And do you say, notwithstand- 
ing, that he virtually admits that Deity, in its 
proper sense, cannot be predicated of Christ ; in 
other words, that Christ is not the Supreme God 
— the God over all? We do. But how can he 
take these two positions without self-contradic- 
tion ? It is not for us to harmonize his positions. 
We only state what those positions are. That 
he at one time represents Christ as " the Supreme 
God — the God over all," no reader of the Review 
will doubt, for the representation is made fully 
and without qualification. See page 66 of the 
Review. No more words are necessary on this 
point. 

Now, if the reader will turn to the portion of 
the Review included between pages 22 and 34, 
to which we have already alluded, he will find 
a series of quotations from Bishop Pearson, and 
other writers, adduced to prove that the Christ- 
ian church has always held to the supremacy of 
the Father, a supremacy not formal or nominal, 
but real ; so real and positive that, according to 
the quotations, " the ancient doctors of the 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 113 

church have not stuck to call the Father the 
origin, the cause, the author, the root, the foun- 
tain, and the head of the Son, or t he whole Di- 
vinity." This language is very strong and sig- 
nificant. The Father, according to the ancient 
teachers, is the origin, the cause, the author of the 
Son — nay, he is the whole Divinity. Now, is 
it possible to use language which shall more 
clearly affirm that self-existence belongs to the 
Father alone ; and that the existence of the 
Son is a caused, a derived existence ? This is 
the very point to prove which the quotations 
are made by the reviewer, viz : that " the Fa- 
ther has a pre-eminence in that his nature is un- 
derived ; in that he is the Father; that he sends 
the Son," &c. Self-existence, then, according 
to the authorities adduced by the reviewer, has 
never been attributed to Christ by the Christian 
church. And now we would ask how Deity can 
be predicated of a being to whom one of the 
essential, most characteristic and distinctive at- 
tributes of Deity is denied ? How can a being 
be " the Supreme God," " the God over all," 
whose existence is confessedly a derived exis- 
tence, of whom the Father is the origin, the au- 
thor, the cause ? Deity, we say it with all re- 



114 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

spect, Deity shorn of the glorious attributes of 
Deity, is a mere shadow — it is not Deity at all ; 
and to predicate such Deity of any being, is to 
use words without appreciable meaning. Hence 
it was that we stated, some pages back, that 
when the reviewer speaks of the Deity of Christ, 
he does not mean Deity, but something else ; 
and hence it is that we now repeat,as fully proved, 
our statement that the reviewer virtually admits 
that Deity, in any proper sense of the term, can 
be predicated of the Father only ; and that he 
virtually denies that it can, in any proper sense 
of the term, be predicated of Christ, 

Thus, according to the reviewer, Christ is " the 
Supreme God," and Christ is not " the Supreme 
God." These are the positions assumed by him, 
positions which, if language means anything, are 
utterly irreconcilable ; and assumed by one who 
sneers at Unitarians, because of " the difference 
of opinion, which," as he asserts, " every Unita- 
rian holds from every other Unitarian upon a 
subject where the only one faith has been already 
appropriated and held by the church Catholic, 
since the Christian era." Such sneers,we would re- 
spectfully suggest, come with poor grace from 
one who, within the narrow compass of a little 



UJOTABIA^ VIEWS VINDICATm U5 

book, differs widely, irreconcilably from himself. 
We have now indicated, with sufficient clear- 
ness we trust, some of the reasons why Unitari- 
ans believe that " Deity '' can with propriety 
be affirmed of the Father alone. All our reasons 
may be summed up and embraced in this one, 
that the Saviour has expressly taught us that 
the Father is "the only true God." 

But while we maintain, with all earnestness, 
the doctrine of the unity, th3 supremacy, the 
sole Deity of the Father, as a plain and essential 
doctrine of revelation, we do not depreciate the 
Saviour, or withhold from him the honor which, 
as we understand them, the Scriptures — the sa- 
cred words of inspiration — require us to pay him, 
and which our hearts prompt us to pay with joy 
and gratitude. As the Report clearly shows, we 
regard him as holding a place subordinate only 
to that held by " his Father and our Father ; 
his God and our God." The reviewer, alluding 
to the views which the Report represents Unita- 
rians as holding, says, " Christ is every thing 
but God. His pre-existence, his divine mission, 
his procession, his exaltation, are treated in the 
most flattering terms imaginable. Compliments 
of every kind are showered upon him." — Re- 



116 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

view, p, 43. Flattering terms! Compliments 
showered upon him ! Such language is very 
painful to us. Too deep is our reverence for 
the Saviour, his pure, transparent spirit, his 
holy, heavenly character, to permit us even to 
think of compliments in connection with him, or 
to use any language in regard to him, but the 
language of simple truth. We confess that we 
were somewhat surprised that the reviewer's own 
reverence for Jesus, if not his sense of the 
courtesy due from one ^sincere Christian gentle- 
man to another whom he had every reason to 
believe equally sincere with himself, did not 
prevent him from thus characterizing the terms, 
in which deep reverence, and heart-felt gratitude 
towards the Son of God, had found honest ex- 
pression. But let that pass. 

As the Report shows, we regard Jesus as the 
Son of God — a relation of deepest interest, of 
sublimest character, of unutterable importance. 
The depths of this relation, we do not pretend 
to fathom ; its full significance, we do not pro- 
fess to understand. Not to finite power, not to 
human intelligence, does it belong, to sound 
those depths, to exhaust that significance. As 
the more, in solemn silence of the mind, we me- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 117 

ditate upon the awe-inspiring word, ' God/ the 
vaster, the deeper, the more unutterable the 
thoughts it gives birth to ; so with the name, 
' Son of God.' It suggests an ineffable nearness 
in nature, office and character to God. The 
more we dwell upon it, the more we are enabled 
to enter into the meaning of that impressive 
declaration by our Saviour : " He that hath seen 
me, hath seen the Father." He becomes to us 
the living manifestation of the Father, the im- 
age of the invisible God, the word made flesh, 
and dwelling among us full of grace and of truth. 
And as we think of this wonderful being, at once 
Son of God and Son of Man, we have thoughts 
awakened, far transcending our feeble powers of 
expression, in regard to the union of the human 
and the divine ; of the purification and glorifi- 
cation of humanity ; and of the inflowing of the 
divine life into the world, which make Jesus not 
only teacher and example, but Mediator and 
Redeemer, through whom heaven and earth, God 
and man, are to be brought into living union. 
And when, moreover, we think of him as the 
being through whom God's Holy Spirit comes 
to comfort, sanctify, and bless, to be the life of 
the church and of the world, his religion becomes 



118 TTXITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

a glorious, living reality, "whose essence," as an 
able writer has said, " consists not so much in 
the revelation of a new speculative theory or 
system of morality, as in the bestowment of a 
new divine life, fitted to penetrate and refine, 
from its inmost center, man's entire nature, with 
all its powers and capacities, and also to give a 
new direction to all human thought and action ;" 
and all the truths presented in this holy religion, 
relative to the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Spirit, become to us of priceless value, true an- 
gel's food, heavenly manna to the soul. 

In the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as the 
Report states, we cordially believe; nor, although 
the reviewer endeavors to represent Unitarian 
baptism as "ludicrous," and ventures to pro- 
nounce the solemn commission of our Saviour 
to his apostles, to go out into the world, and 
baptize all nations, " absurd and blasphemous 
upon any other scheme than that of a Trinity," 
have we ever been able to see aught but solem- 
nity in the rite, even when administered in a 
Unitarian Church ; or to discern either absurdity 
or blasphemy in the earnest, sincere acknowledg- 
ment of the Fatherhood of God, of the divine 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED, H9 

Sonship of Jesus, and of the reality, presence 
and power of the Holy Spirit. 

"Absurd and blasphemous upon any other 
scheme than that of a Trinity!" Is the doc- 
trine of the Trinity, then, so plain, obvious, and 
intelligible that it is necessary to save our Lord's 
words from becoming absurdity and blasphemy? 
Not so appears to have felt that earnest and de- 
voted Christian, Dr. Watts, whose hymns, sung 
in thousands of churches and myriads of Christian 
homes, "keep company with the hours" and circle 
the earth with nobler strains than the martial 
airs of England, when he penned his solemn Ad- 
dress to the Deity — an address well worthy of 
consideration by all the followers of Jesus, and 
especially by all who are ready, because of differ- 
ence of opinion and interpretation, to deny the 
Christian name to believers as earnest, as sincere, 
and as capable of understanding the Scriptures 
as themselves — " Dear and blessed God ! Hadst 
thou told me plainly in any single text that the 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three real, dis- 
tinct persons in the divine nature, I had never 
suffered myself to be bewildered in so many 
doubts, nor embarrassed with so many strong 
fears of assenting to the mere inventions of men ; 



ISO UNITARIAN YIEWS TKsDICATED. 

or hadst thou been pleased to express and include 
this proposition in the several scattered parts of 
thy book, from whence my reason and conscience 
might with ease find out and with certainty infer 
this doctrine, I should joyfully have employed 
all my reasoning powers with their utmost skill 
and activity, to have found out this inference and 
engraft it into my soul. And can this strange 
and perplexing notion of three persons going to 
make up one True God be so necessary and im- 
portant a part of that Christian doctrine, which 
in the Old Testament and the New is represent- 
ed as so plain and so easy, even to the meanest 
understanding?" — (Sparks' Inquiry, 386.) Such 
words, coming from the very depths of that large 
and pious heart, need no comment. 

Let the reader compare them with the as- 
tounding assertion of the reviewer that the doc- 
trine of the Trinity is found in the express lan- 
guage, as well as every where implied, of Holy 
Writ! — (Review, p. 110.) Express language! 
Strange is it that Dr. Watts could not find that 
language. Express language ! And yet Bishop 
Smalridge declares : " It must be owned that the 
doctrine of the Trinity, as it is proposed in our 
Articles, our Liturgy, our Creeds, is not in so 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 121 

many words taught us in the Holy Scriptures. 
What we profess in our prayers we nowhere read 
in Scripture, that the one God, the one Lord, is 
not one only person, but three persons in one 
substance." — (Sixty Sermons; Ser. 33, p. 348.) 
Express language ! Where is that language ? 
Let the Sacred Volume be searched from begin- 
ning to end, and it cannot be found. 

It is not a pleasant thing to speak thus in re- 
gard to the statements of any man, much less 
of one whom we desire to regard as an earnest, 
sincere, and just man. But when a man asserts 
that a doctrine, which he pronounces essential, 
without belief in which a man cannot be a Chris- 
tian, is found in the express language of Holy 
Writ, and thus endeavors to place those who do 
not ^believe in the doctrine, in the attitude of 
rejecting the plain, authoritative teachings of in- 
spiration; when he represents men who differ 
from him in opinion as ceasing to hold to the 
"Head, even Christ," (Review, p. 10,) who do 
not cease to hold to Christ, but regard^him with 
profound reverence and warm affection ; when he 
intimates (Review, p. 20) that men "deny that 
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father," 
who do not deny but rejoice in believing this 

great truth ; when he designates an honest state- 
14 



122 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

merit of religious opinions as "gilded ashes," 
(Review, p. 13,) and endeavors, as far as his in- 
fluence goes, to induce Christians to withhold the 
Christian name from men to whom the name of 
Christ is unutterably dear (Review, p. 94); when 
he accuses a truth-loving man of caricaturing the 
doctrines of Calvinism, when that man quotes 
the very language of the Westminster Confession, 
and exhibits in plain terms, without overstate- 
ment or understatement, a doctrine which every 
reader of that standard of Calvinism knows is 
taught in it; when he misrepresents the frankly 
spoken and intelligible words, in which an earnest 
heart has expressed its warm feelings, and says 
that believers in "Unitarian Views " give an in- 
vitation which " only repeats, in different lan- 
guage, the glozed untruth of the first tempter 
to the first man, which, for six thousand years, 
has sounded in the hearts of the self-deceived and 
the boaster, Ye shall not surely die, but ye shall 
be as Gods, 'knowing Good from Evil (Review, p. 
155); when this is done, justice to ourselves 
and to the truths which we cherish, compels us 
to speak plainly, and to pronounce such asser- 
tions unjust, ungenerous, and untrue — not, we 
sincerely hope, in intention, but in reality, untrue. 
"Absurd and blasphemous upon any other 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 123 

scheme than that of a Trinity " ! Is the doctrine 
of the Trinity, then, so evidently a doctrine of 
Scripture — so fundamental and essential — that 
without belief in it one cannot be a Christian? 
Not so thought that accomplished man, Bishop 
Watson, when he declared (Life, vol.1, pp.75, 76) 
"if any one thinks that a Unitarian is not a Chris- 
tian, I plainly say, without being a Unitarian my- 
self, that I think otherwise." Not so thought 
that eminent scholar, Dr. Parr, when, alluding to 
a prominent Unitarian, he said, "I shall ever 
think and speak of Mr, Wakefield as a very pro- 
found scholar, as a most honest man, and as a 
Christian who united knowledge with zeal, piety 
with benevolence, and the deep simplicity of a 
child with the fortitude of a martyr." Or when 
again he said, u without professing any partiality 
for Unitarians, I hold that they who acknowledge 
Jesus Christ to be the promised Messiah, to have 
had a direct and special commission from the 
Almighty, to have been endowed supernaturally 
with the Holy Spirit, to have worked miracles, 
and on the third day to have risen from the dead, 
— yes, my Lord, I hold that men thus believing, 
have a sacred claim to be called Christians." — 
(Works, vol. 1, p. 402; vol. 7, pp. 9, 10.) 
These quotations, as well as the preceding 



124 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

one and the one which we are next to give, can 
be found in Wilson's Concessions, pp. 8, 9, and 10. 

Not so thought Dr. Doddridge, as Dr. Kippis 
clearly shows, when he writes as follows in the 
Biographia Britannica, vol. 5, p. 307: "Once I 
remember some narrow-minded people of his 
congregation gave him no small trouble on ac- 
count of a gentleman in communion with the 
church, who was a professed Arian and who oth- 
erwise dissented from the common standard of 
orthodoxy. This gentleman they wished either 
to be excluded from the ordinance of the Lord's 
Supper, or to have his attendance upon it pre- 
vented; but the doctor declared he would sacri- 
fice his place and even his life, rather than fix 
any such mark of discouragement upon one who, 
whatever his doctrinal sentiments were, appeared 
to be a true Christian." 

Not so thought that extraordinary man, in 
whom there was so rare a combination of ardent 
piety and profound practical wisdom, John Wes- 
ley, when he said : "■ We may die without the 
knowledge of many truths, and yet be carried 
into Abraham's bosom ; but if we die without 
love, what will knowledge avail? I will not 
quarrel with you about any opinion; only see 
that your heart be right towards God, that you 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 125 

know and love the Lord Jesus, that you love 
your neighbor and walk as your Master walked, 
and I desire no more. I am sick of opinions. 
Give me solid and substantial religion ; give me 
an humble, gentle lover of God and men ; let my 
soul be with these Christians, wheresoever they 
are and whatsoever opinion they are of." His 
fidelity to these noble views Wesley showed in 
deeds as well as in words. He published the 
memoir of a Unitarian, and he prefaced the 
memoir with these words : " I was exceedingly 
struck at reading the following life, having long 
settled it in my mind that the entertaining 
wrong notions concerning the Trinity was incon- 
sistent with real piety. But I dare not argue 
against matters of fad ; I dare not deny that 
Mr. Firmin was a pious man, although his no- 
tions of the Trinity were quite erroneous." 

Equally broad and noble are the views of 
Charles Wesley, and the saintly Fletcher. De- 
lightful is it to ascend, with such men, from the 
low, dark, damp valleys of sectarianism, to the 
high, broad table-land, where Christian truth can 
be seen in its comprehensiveness; and where 
the soul can inhale the pure air of Christian 
charity. On that table-land, we find the men 
who, in every portion of the Christian church, 



126 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

by largeness of mind, by fervent piety and ho- 
liness of life, have most impressively and beau- 
tifully illustrated the power of the religion of 
Jesus, to enlighten, to sanctify and bless. There 
we find Fenelon, Jeremy Taylor, Leighton, Chil- 
lingworth, Baxter, Robert Hall, men who loved 
the forms under which they worshiped God, and 
who were decided in their religious opinions; but 
who could see that there was a Christianity under- 
lying all forms and opinions, on which all earn- 
est and sincere followers of Jesus, and lovers of 
God,could stand and adore. To persons of a differ- 
ent class, both in mind and heart, must we turn 
to find illustrations of the spirit, which, because 
of differences in opinion and interpretation, de- 
nies the Christian name, and the enjoyment of 
Christian ordinances and privileges, to men, who 
reverently study the Scriptures, who love the 
Saviour, and endeavor to walk faithfully in the 
path of duty which he has marked out. 

To one other eminent Christian we now turn 
for illustration of the point before us, the gifted 
and beloved Neander, to whose words we invite 
special attention. Neander believed in the doc- 
trine of the Trinity, which he thus defines : " It 
is this doctrine, by which God becomes known 
as the original Fountain of all existence ; as he, 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 127 

by whom the rational creation, that had become 
estranged from him, is brought back to the fel- 
lowship with him; and as he in the fellowship 
with whom it from thenceforth subsists ; — the 
threefold relation in which God stands to man- 
kind, as primal ground, mediator and end — Cre- 
ator, Redeemer and Sanctifier ; in which three- 
fold relation, the whole Christian knowledge of 
God, is completely announced." We do not 
know whether the reviewer would consider the 
doctrine, thus defined, as quite up to the mark ; 
but we take it for granted, that neither he, nor 
any other champion of orthodoxy, will class that 
great and good man with proscribed heretics. Ne- 
ander, then, was a firm, conscientious believer in 
the doctrine of the Trinity. Did he regard it 
as so essential, that, without it, the Saviour's 
commission becomes absurd and blasphemous ? 
Let the reader judge. Here are his words, 
extracted from the first volume of his History 
of the Christian Religion and Church, page 572 : 
"This doctrine does not strictly belong to the fun- 
damental articles of the Christian faith, as appears 
sufficiently evident from the fact that it is expressly 
held forth in no one particular passage of the New 
Testament ; for the only one in which this is done, 
the passage relating to the three that bear record 



128 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

(1 John v. 7) is undoubtedly spurious ; and in its 
ungenuine shape, testifies to the fact how foreign 
such a collocation is from the style of the New 
Testament Scriptures. We find in the New Tes- 
tament no other fundamental article besides that 
of which the Apostle Paul says, that other 
foundation can no man lay than that is laid, the 
annunciation of Jesus as the Messiah ; and 
Christ himself designates as the foundation of his 
religion, the faith in the only true God, and in Je- 
sus Christ, whom he hath sent. — John xvii. 3." 
This strong and positive statement we com- 
mend to the attention of all thoughtful Christ- 
ians, not only because it presents a full and sa- 
tisfactory reply to those who would make belief 
in the doctrine of the Trinity, a test for admis- 
sion to the table of our Lord, and a condition 
for assigning the Christian name, but, also and 
especially, because it so clearly shows the foun- 
dation on which the church stands. Faith in 
the only true God, and in Jesus Christ, whom he 
hath sent This faith the church has a right to 
require in those who seek admission; for this 
was required by Christ and his apostles. More 
than this, it has no right to demand ; and if it 
does demand more than this as a condition of 
Christian fellowship, we say, as we have said be- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 129 

fore, it is guilty of usurpation and tyranny. 
It has no right to make belief in the Trinity, or 
assent to the Nicene, Athanasian, or any other 
creed, or compliance with any particular forms 
which it may prescribe— a condition of admission 
to the communion table, or of receiving the 
Christian name. If a man has faith in God and 
his Son, it is not, we repeat, for the church to 
decide whether or not he is entitled to the name. 
That question, Christ has already decided ; and 
if any church withholds the name, it places it- 
self in opposition to Christ, it virtually rebels 
against and renounces his authority. The man 
may be Arian, Trinitarian, or Humanitarian ; he 
may be correct or incorrect in his philosophical 
and metaphysical views, but, whether correct or 
incorrect in them, if he have faith in God, and 
in Jesus, as his Son, as the Messiah, he is enti- 
tled to claim the name dear to all Christian 
hearts, and to claim it not as a favor, but as a right 
Men and churches, arrogating orthodoxy to 
themselves, may fancy themselves authorised to 
sit in judgment upon Unitarians and other 
Christians whom they designate as heretics, to 
debar them from the table of our Lord, to shut 
them out from Christian Associations ; but 

whenever and wherever they do these things, 
15 



130 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

we charge them not only with violating the 
spirit of Christian courtesy, but with assuming 
and exercising an authority which does not be- 
long to them, and thereby setting at nought 
the authority of Christ and of God. Jesus ac- 
cused the Pharisees of old, of making the 
word of God of none effect through their tradi- 
tions. Modern Pharisaism does the same 
thing. The word of God, uttered through his 
Son, is, that faith in him and his Son, is the 
grand, essential, fundamental thing. No, says 
modern Pharisaism, belief in my creeds, my 
forms, my dogmas, is the essential thing, with- 
out which, though your heart overflows with 
love for God and his Christ, you shall not wear 
the name of disciple ; you shall not approach 
the communion table ; and, as far as rests with 
me, you shall not share in the bliss of the re- 
deemed in heaven. 

This is modern Pharisaism, which a few ages 
back brought the horrid enginery of the inqui- 
sition to bear against those whom it was pleased to 
denominate heretics, but which now, restrained by 
the spirit of the age, or rather by the spirit of gen- 
uine Christianity, which more and more pervades 
society,can only show itself in acts and words which 
at once reveal its littleness and its impotency. 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 131 

Modern Pharisaism! Once, armed with the 
power of the state, able to lay nations under its 
terrible interdict, and manifest its reality in sword 
and flame, it had an awful dignity; but now, poor 
thing! it has lost much of its respectability, and 
is tottering towards its grave. Let it die, and be 
buried. None will mourn its dissolution except 
such, if any such there shall then be, as desire 
some other foundation of the Christian church 
than that which God, through Christ, hath laid. 

Faith in God and Jesus Christ, his Son! It is 
this which has made the church a living church in 
all ages; it is this which has caused whatever real 
union the church has enjoyed; and it is this which 
will produce that genuine union, which eventually 
the church will rejoice in; that unity of the spirit 
in the bond of peace, which will be the fulfillment 
of the Saviour's promise and God's answer to his 
earnest prayer. As we recall the history of the 
Christian church, what names stand out as glori- 
ously illustrative of its blessedness and power? 
Such names "as those of Justin Martyr, Origen, 
Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Pascal, Fenelon, 
Leighton, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Fox, Wm. 
Penn, Milton, Oberlin, John Howard, Cheverus, 
Felix Neff, Chalmers, Channing, Ware. Who 
will deny that these were Christian men? Who 



132 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

doubts that they were welcomed to the heavenly 
home, or that they are now enjoying the bliss of 
the just made perfect in the realms of light? 
We feel, every Christian heart feels, that these 
are all one in Christ their head. But what makes 
them one? Not unity of form, for under every 
form did they worship God, from the gorgeous 
ceremonial of the cathedral to the severely sim- 
ple service of the Quakers or Friends. Not sim- 
ilarity of opinion, for among them we find every 
variety of thought and speculation. Here are 
Protestants and Catholics, Trinitarians and Uni- 
tarians, believers in unending retribution and in 
final restoration, in Episcopacy and in indepen- 
dent Congregationalism. And yet we regard 
them all as Christians, all as united in Christ 
and his church. 

What unites them? Faith in uod and his Son; 
a living faith, that faith which works by love, and 
purifies the heart. This is their bond of union, 
their only bond, and an all-sufficient bond. 

Let this faith be recognized as the true source, 
as the only means of union. As we believe that by 
this the departed are united in Christ, so let us|be- 
lieve that the living are united. Let all Christians 
be ready to admit, cheerfully, cordially, that faith 
in God and his Christ is the essential, the funda- 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 133 

mental thing in the church, and that all, of what- 
ever denomination, who possess this, are entitled 
to the Christian name. Then, instead of being 
so widely sundered, we shall in spirit be brought 
together. We shall learn of each other. We 
shall delight to have in our libraries and by our 
side the books in which the great thinkers and 
noble spirits, not only of our own denomina- 
tion, but of all denominations, speak unto us, 
and, as we hold grateful and reverent commun- 
ion with these truth-seeking and truth-illumined 
minds, we shall rejoice to feel and to acknowl- 
edge that no Christian,^that no set of Christians, 
has monopolized God's truth. That truth is 
infinite. Some clearly discern one portion, some 
another. The great difficulty with us all is that, 
because of our isolation, we are apt to regard 
the segment which we severally see as the 
full circle of truth. Let us come together, join 
segment to segment, and then, though we 
may not be able to see the circle in all its sym- 
metry and completeness, for the finite mind can 
never measure and comprehend infinity, our men- 
tal range will be widened, our vision will be pu- 
rified; and, through the influence of God's Ho- 
ly Spirit, we shall be prepared for that world of 
deeper thought, of wider knowledge, of warmer 



134 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

love, where we shall see eye to eye and know as 
we are known. 

Nor is it only as means of preparation for the 
love and harmony of the spiritual world, that 
faith — living, heart-felt faith — in God and Christ, 
and the union which springs from this faith, are 
to be earnestly desired, and to be valued as the 
crown-jewels of heaven. They are needed for 
this world, as well as for another. Society is 
Christian in name, but it is far from being Christ- 
ian in reality. All around us are evils, vices, 
crimes, woes— dark blots upon our boasted Chris- 
tian civilization, and terrible reproaches to it, — 
which demand removal. Vast and fearful social 
problems press upon us, and demand solution. 
But there will never be removal of the one, nor 
solution of the other, until the energies of all 
God-fearing and Christ -loving hearts are con- 
centrated and brought to bear upon this great 
end. Too long have these energies been im- 
paired by sectarian suspicion and wasted in sec- 
tarian war. There is a power, a vital, resistless 
power, in the church which it has never fully ex- 
erted, the possession and responsibilities of which 
it has never fully realized, because its members 
have not been heartily united. Let them be 
thus united, let there be the union which springs 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED, 135 

from faith in God and Christ, genuine spiritual 
union, union of heart and purpose, the only un- 
ion attainable or essential — for uniformity in 
opinion and ritual there never can be, while there 
are deep differences in mental power, education 
and taste — let there be heart-union, soul-union, 
and a power will be developed, a moral and spir- 
itual force, of which Christians now scarcely 
dream. Constantly will that power increase, as 
faith deepens and strengthens, and to every em- 
ergency will it prove adequate. It will go on, 
conquering and to conquer, until the kingdoms 
of this world shall become the kingdoms of our 
Lord and of his Christ. Then society will not 
merely be called, but it will be Christian. 

In the accomplishment of this great work, we, 
Unitarian Christians, desire to do our part, hum- 
ble it may be; and we shall rejoice to see all oth- 
er Christians doing theirs. To all who have 
faith in God and Christ, whatever name they 
may bear, we bid a hearty God-speed. We re- 
joice, and always shall rejoice, at beholding and 
acknowledging Christian excellence wherever and 
by whomever manifested. True-hearted, devoted 
followers of Christ, we see in every denomina- 
tion ; men and women who, in public and private, 
at home and in foreign lands, by word and 



136 UNITARIAN VIEWS YINDICATKI). 

deed, are illustrating the beauty and the holi- 
ness of the religion dear to us all. For such 
Christians, we render heartfelt thanks ; and upon 
them, we pray that the blessing of Heaven may 
rest for ever and ever. 

But while we shall always esteem it a delight- 
ful privilege, as well as a sacred duty, to see and 
acknowledge Christian worth, wherever manifest- 
ed, and with whatever religious opinions it may 
be associated, we shall never, we trust, prove re- 
creant or unfaithful to the views which a reverent 
study of the Bible reveals to us as true Scriptu- 
ral views. While we shall aim, at all times, to 
do justice to other denominations, we shall always 
demand that justice be done to our own. We 
shall always protest, with plainness and solemni- 
ty, against the sectarianism and bigotry which 
would deny the Christian name to Unitarians. 
Unitarians not Christians! John Milton not a 
Christian ! Destroy every copy of Paradise Lost; 
blot out every trace of it from the mind of man; 
bury in oblivion those majestic prose-poems in 
which that noble intellect, at the promptings of 
a heroic heart, pleaded the cause of liberty and 
humanity, and then let one, if he will, breathe 
forth that calumny — but not till then. 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 137 

John Locke, the profound thinker, the friend 
of mental freedom, not a Christian ! Sir Isaac 
Newton, who brought to the study of the vol- 
ume of Revelation, the same transcendent intel- 
lect, the same child-like spirit, with which he had 
reverently sought to discover the laws written 
by the finger of God, in the volume of Nature — 
Sir Isaac Newton not a Christian ! 

No — according to the position taken by the 
reviewer, and by all who deny the Christian 
name to Unitarians, and, under the assumption 
of orthodoxy, advocate the unholy system of 
exclusion — these great and good men, whose 
memory is enshrined in all true hearts, were not 
Christians, because they were Unitarians. We 
thank God that they were Unitarians ; not be- 
cause our faith needs the sanction of great 
names — for it is content with the sanction of 
God's Word — but that the Christian world may 
understand the true nature of that system of 
proscription, which arrogates to itself the epi- 
thets, " orthodox ' and " evangelical ; ' and 
which, to be consistent with itself, must sacrile- 
giously blot out such glorious stars as these 
from the Christian heaven. Against this exclu- 
sive, denunciatory system, we shall always utter 
our earnest and solemn protest. We shall al- 



138 UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 

ways endeavor, with the blessing of God, to be 
faithful to the liberty wherewith the Son of God 
has made us free. 

We have thus vindicated the doctrines which, 
as Unitarian Christians, we rejoice to hold — doc- 
trines which seem to us plainly, explicitly taught 
in the Holy Scriptures — doctrines which did not 
require three or four centuries to pass before 
they could be fully developed and adequately 
expressed, but which were presented in fullness 
of development by the Saviour and his apostles, 
and which neither seek nor need any other me- 
dium of expression than the divinely rich and 
beautiful language of the Sacred Volume. To 
this volume we shall cling. With its expression 
of heavenly truth we shall remain content, not- 
withstanding the anxiety of the reviewer to have 
us pass " through the Scriptures to those very 
creeds which we have rashly discarded." We 
fear — we hope, rather, — that in this respect he 
is doomed to disappointment. Through the 
Scriptures to the creeds! It certainly is not 
our intention to turn to any cisterns which man 
has hewed — " broken cisterns that can hold no 
water" — while we have the heavenly fountain 
of living waters flowing fresh and free. We 
trust, moreover, that in time the reviewer and 



UNITARIAN VIEWS VINDICATED. 139 

those who agree with him ia theological opinion, 
will go on with the good work, so auspiciously 
begun by the American Episcopal church when 
it set aside the Athanasian creed ; that they 
will also set aside the Nicene creed, and change 
the Apostles' creed, so called, from the form in 
which it is now commonly used — a form which 
the translator of Mosheim says it attained in the 
Romish church — to the simpler and purer form 
in which it was used in the fourth century. 
Having gone thus far, we doubt not that they 
will gladly go one step farther, and cordially 
accept, in all its simplicity and all its compre- 
hensiveness, the genuine Apostles' Confession of 
Faith, and make the Bible alone " their divinely- 
authorized standard both of faith and practice." 
Then all of them, having laid aside human creeds, 
will cast off forever, as many of them have already 
done, the spirit of illiberality and denunciation, 
and will rejoice in recognizing as fellow-Christians 
all who have faith in God and his well-beloved Son. 
In hoping thus, the reviewer will think we 
hope against hope. To him an earnest, honest 
protest against creeds, as arbitrary standards of 
faith, and against the exclusive spirit which often 
accompanies them, is only ludicrous. The Re- 
port, published at the request of the Conference 



140 UNITARIAN VIEWB VINDICATED. 

of Western Unitarian Churches, "reminds him, 
irresistibly, of our naval hero, Paul Jones, with 
three little ships, putting Great Britain in a state 
of blockade." We accept the comparison, though 
intended in ridicule, and thank him for it. Paul 
Jones possessed an earnest, gallant spirit. He 
was ready to do what he could against the power 
which then stood forth as the deadly foe of Amer- 
ican liberty. His three little ships, too, were the 
precursors of that glorious navy which afterwards 
carried the stars and stripes in triumph over all 
waters, and asserted and maintained the freedom of 
the ocean against her, who till then had claimed to 
be Mistress of the Seas. Few may Unitarians ap- 
pear and small their resources. We may have three 
ships only with which to meet that power which, 
under the name of Orthodoxy, haughtily claims 
dominion to itself and denies the freedom of 
God's boundless ocean of truth. But those ships, 
we rejoice to know, belong to that navy which, 
through the united exertions of liberal-hearted 
Christians of every name, is daily increasing in 
power, and which yet is destined, with the bless- 
ing of Heaven, to vindicate the freedom of the 
seas, and cause the flag of Christian liberty to 
wave in glorious and eternal triumph. 



NOTE. 

BY THE WHITER OF THE REPORT. 

I do not think of taking any notice of the 
many instances of personal allusion in the Re- 
view, except to say they are unusual, uncalled 
for, and unjust ; and probably have proceeded 
from an idiosyncrasy of the author, which plain- 
ly appears in the Review. Self-sufficiency leads 
men, aware or unaware, into wrong to others in 
writing, as well as in other actions. 

I have felt painful mortification at the disap- 
pointment. I had thought that, above all men, 
politeness, justice and kindness, were to be ex- 
pected from one who fills the place of a minister, 
a servant of Christ. 

When, however, he has not been content with 
unkindnesss, neglect of established decorum, and 
offensive insinuations, but has attempted to make 
me utter a belief which I have not uttered, not 
even intimated, it is due that I should speak for 
myself, and not let him put words in my mouth. 
His Review will be read, doubtless, by persons 
who will never see the Report ; and the writer 
of it, whose views, to be sure, are not of much 
importance, will be supposed to have written what 
he did not write, and what he did not think. 



142 NOTE BY THE WRITER OF THE REPORT. 

I shall not attempt to correct all the perver- 
sions and garblings of the Review ; but, stand- 
ing as I do towards the Conference, the subject 
mentioned, pp. 144 and 145, is of too much 
importance to be allowed to pass without correc- 
tion, as far as this note can have the effect. 

I do not like to use some words that are in 
the preceding paragraphs, in reference to any 
one, and especially when I am speaking in con- 
nection with the solemn subject which immedi- 
ately succeeds ; but I cannot avoid this, unless 
I neglect the truth, and surrender myself to 
what another does. 

1. He says, "Even the writer of this Report, 
who believes in a real expiation, does not think it 
was intended to affect God, though he reads, in 
his Bible, that ' God is angry with the wicked 
every day.' He believes in an expiation that has 
its beginning, middle and end in man — a real ex- 
piation, that has no reference to guilt or punish- 
ment." Now, surely this is not a fair statement, 
or anything like it. It would make those who 
have not seen the Report, not only misunderstand 
what it contained, but, indeed, think I had writ- 
ten down the absurdity which he endeavors to 
make me speak. I never said any such words, 
or uttered, in any form, such a sentiment as that 
I believed in an expiation that has its beginning, 
middle and end in man — a real expiation, that 



NOTE BY THE WR1TFE OF THE REPORT. 143 

has no reference to guilt or punishment. Why 
did he refrain from any allusion to these words, 
printed in italics, as they are here, to be found in 
the very section of the Report he was pretending 
to comment on? — "But his death was necessary 
on account of our sins. And ivhen ive contemplate 
His suffering <$) brought about by our transgres- 
sions^ 0, what can so powerfully impress us with 
the aw fulness of sin!" 

I certainly did mean to be understood as be- 
lieving that the expiation was not intended to 
render God placable by appeasing anger, or mak- 
ing a satisfaction to him, in any sense in which 
these expressions are understood as applying to 
men. There is no statement any where in the 
Scriptures that God was reconciled, or satisfied 
for a breach of his law, by the death of Christ. 
There are many figurative expressions, differing 
from one another, to be found, that would not 
controvert the position, but in a degree sustain 
it, if we had seen the position stated; but these 
figurative expressions do all correspond with an- 
other position, that seems to me to agree with the 
love, and justice, and mercy of our Father in 
Heaven, as revealed by C hrist, while He cannot 
look upon sin with the least allowance. I think 
we are bound to believe, notwithstanding what we 
see of moral and physical evil in what is created, 
that the great Creator and Father of all is a per- 



144 NOTE BY THE WRITER OF THE REPORT. 

fectly good being — this is a matter of implicit 
faith and trust. We cannot, therefore, believe 
that this good Being is capable of revenge or 
cruelty, as we understand such words to mean in 
reference to men. We, then, should be inclined to 
interpret expressions which we find in the Bible, 
by this faith in his infinite goodness ; and when 
we read such words as that "the Lord was wroth," 
" For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall 
burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the 
earth with her increase, and set on fire the foun- 
dations of the mountains," words spoken in refer- 
ence to the rebellious Hebrews, Deut. xxxii. 22. 
[Compare the quotation of the reviewer, page 
146, with the full and true text. The figure of 
speech is plain and necessary in the text.] "God 
is angry with the wicked;' "the wrath of 
God," — we should remember that in the same 
book, we find it declared, He is " merciful and 
gracious, long-suffering and abundant in good- 
ness;" that "His mercy endureth forever;' 1 
" God is love ;" in short, that He is "our Father 
in heaven," which imports more than the kind- 
ness of an earthly parent's heart. The strong 
expressions that are used, such as ' wrath ' and 
'anger,' must be figurative of the great disap- 
probation God has of wickedness ; of the enor- 
mity of sin ; for we cannot imagine, even, that 
the Infinite Jehovah should be angry, fall into a 



KOTE BY THE WKlTifK OF THE REPOXUV X45 

passion of wrath, as such words express the feeling 
of men. But formerly, literal anger was applied 
to God — and so it is now, by some men — and 
they seem to glory in the thought — just as it was 
believed the " lake of fire, burning with brim- 
stone," was not to be taken as a figurative ex- 
pression, but a real lake. And it was when such 
things as these were believed, men also believed 
that God would not pardon sin, on repentance 
and turning to him, without a satisfaction made 
him ; and thus the doctrine must have got into 
the creeds. But those w r ho believe in the abso- 
lute goodness of God, do not find that the Scrip- 
tures say so. They find that our Lord said, 
" God so loved the world, that he gave his only 
begotten Son ; that whosoever believeth on him, 
should not perish, but have everlasting life. For 
God sent not his Son into the world, to condemn 
the world, but that the world through him might 
be saved."-John iii. 1 6, 17. If the blood of Christ 
was "shed for many, for the remission of sins " — 
and so, surely, it was-(Matt. xxvi. 28) it was done 
by the appointment of God, out of love to men, and 
not to satisfy God, or appease him, or render him 
placable — not to affect him, for it was done in his 
own Providence. Remission of sins does not 
imply satisfaction rendered. The remission may 
be on other grounds. Satisfaction has not, ne- 
cessarily, any connection with it— none at all. 
16 



146 NOTE BY THE WHITER OF THE REFOKTs 



The writer seems to think the word " expia- 
tion," must mean " satisfaction/' or it means 
nothing ; and we have no Saviour, if there is not 
a satisfaction. The original word, from which 
our word expiation is derived, meant, in its natu- 
ral and priinary sense," absolution " ox purifying. 
(Leverett.) The meaning quoted by the review- 
er, from Webster, is secondary and defective. 
Expio means " to purge anything that has been 
polluted by crime or offense ; to cleanse, purge, 
clear, restore to purity," (Leverett's Lexicon.) 
If Christ, out of God's mercy and love, took 
away the sin of the world, then there was an ex- 
piation, " not to affect God, but in his wise and 
incomprehensible Providence, to accomplish our 
salvation." That is the Scripture view, it seems 
to me, as shown by the writings of the Apostles. 
St. Paul, quoting from the Old Testament, in 
the eleventh chapter of Romans, says, " And so 
all Israel shall be saved, as it is written, There 
shall come out of Sion, the Deliverer, and shall 
take away ungodliness from Jacob : For this is 
my covenant unto them, when I shall take aivay 
their sins." In the ninth chapter of Hebrews, 
the author says, " For if the blood of bulls, and 
of goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling 
the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the 
flesh, How. much more shall the blood of Christ, 
who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered himself 



NOTE BY THE WRITER OF THE REPORT 147 

without spot to God, purge your conscience from 
dead works to serve the living God?" The author 
goes on in this chapter to show, further, that the 
sacrifices of the old law were meant for cleansing 
and purifying ; and says, " almost all things are 
by the law purged with blood ; and without the 
shedding of blood is no remission." Now, by re- 
mission, (it is not said 'of sins,' as the reviewer 
adds to the text, p. 142,) here, he evidently 
means only the purification of the tabernacle, 
&c, and a ceremonial cleansing of the people; 
(" He sprinkled both the book and all the people" 
verse 19;) for, in the verse right before it, he says, 
" moreover, he," Moses, " sprinkled likewise 
with blood, both the tabernacle and all the ves- 
sels of the ministry." [The speaking in the 
present tense, " there is no remission," does not 
interfere with this view, for he speaks of the 
priests' administration under the old law, as if 
existing now, at the time he writes.] 

He then again refers to the office of Christ, 
succeeding the old ceremonial, and says, "he 
appeared to put aivay sin by the sacrifice of 
himself. " And this is exactly the sacrifice of 
expiation, but not satisfaction. And he goes 
on in the next chapter to speak on the same 
subject: After stating the insufficiency of the 
old sacrifice " to take away sins," and the coming 
of Christ to do the will of God, he says, " By 



148 NOTE BY THB WiUTBB OF THE RXFOfil'. 

which will we are sanctified through the offering 
of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And 
every priest standeth daily ministering and of- 
fering oftentimes the same sacrifices which can 
never take away sins : but this man, after he 
had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat 
down on the right hand of God." This plainly 
means not to express a satisfaction to reconcile 
God, but purifying, restoring, taking away sins. 
"Sprinkling," "blood of sprinkling," mean 
purifying, cleansing, restoring. In the twelfth 
chapter of Hebrews, after having spoken in the 
ninth, tenth and eleventh, of the sprinkling of 
blood in the purification of the tabernacle, &c; 
and " having our hearts sprinkled from an evil 
conscience ; " and how Moses " kept the pass- 
over, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that 
destroyed the first born should touch them," the 
author says, " But ye are come to Mount Sion," 
&c. " and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Cov- 
enant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speak- 
eth better things than that of Abel." St. Peter, 
in the first chapter of his first Epistle, says, 
"Elect, &c. through sanctification of the Spirit, 
unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood 
of Jesus Christ." St. John, who recorded the 
exclamation of John the Baptist, " Behold 
the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of 
the world," says in the first chapter of his first 



NOTE BY THE WRITER OF THE REPORT. 149 

Epistle, " the blood of Jesus Christ this Son clean- 
seth us from all sin j" and in the third chapter, 
fifth verse, he says, " And ye know that he was 
manifested to take away our sins." 

If all these expressions, from the declaration 
of our Lord himself, down to the last quotation, do 
not show that there was a sacrifice without a 
satisfaction to an angry God, as we mean by the 
word ' angry ' as applied to men, then it must be 
because such a thing cannot be stated, or because 
they are overcome by passages that cannot be re- 
conciled to these; It seems to me, when we can 
find no statement that there was a satisfaction to 
reconcile God, the other passages, in metaphori- 
cal language, that vary from each other, can be 
as well reconciled to these as to one another. 

Those who hold to the sacrifice of expiation, all 
agree that the sacrifice of the law did prefigure the 
sacrifice of Christ. Archbishop Magee, a learned 
doctor in the reviewer's church, (with whose views 
I do not always agree) in his two Discourses on 
the Atonement, does not once use the word 'sat- 
isfaction;' and the notion of appeasing wrath in 
God, and rendering him placable, is entirely dis- 
carded. He says, " The sacrifice of Christ was 
never deemed by any, who do not wish to calum- 
niate the doctrine of the atonement, to have made 
God placable ; but merely viewed as the means, 
appointed by divine wisdom, through which to be- 
stow forgiveness." And in the 2d Discourse he 
15 



150 NOTE BY THE WRITER OF THE REPORT. 

says, " The offering up an animal cannot be im- 
agined to have had any intrinsic efficacy in pro- 
curing pardon for the transgression of the offerer. 
The blood of bulls and goats could have possessed 
no virtue whereby to cleanse him from his offenses. 
Still less intelligible is the application of the blood 
of the victim to the purifying of the parts of the 
tabernacle, and the apparatus of the ceremonial 
worship. All this can clearly have had no other 
than an instituted meaning, and can be understood 
only as in reference to some blood-shedding, which, 
in an eminent degree, possessed the power of pu- 
rifying from pollution" And, (I do not quote 
consecutively,) "That the sacrifices of the law 
should, therefore, have chiefly operated to the 
cleansing from external impurities, and to render- 
ing persons or things fit to approach God in the 
exercises of the ceremonial worship — whilst, at 
the same time, they were designed to pre-figure 
the sacrifice of Christ, which was purely spiritual, 
and possessed the transcendant virtue of atoning 
for all moral pollution— involves no inconsistency 
whatever, since in this the true proportion of the 
entire dispensations is preserved." And, " Thus, 
when we find the virtue of atonement attributed 
to the sacrifice of Christ, in like manner as it had 
been to those under the law, by attending to the 
representations so minutely given of it in the lat- 
ter, we are enabled to comprehend its true im- 
port in the former;" and he speaks Again of the 



SOTB BY THE WRITER OF THE REPORT. 151 

sacrifice of Christ as in its effects similar to the 
sacrifice of the law; and of that he says, " the 
consequence of the whole being the removal of 
the punishment of these iniquities from the of- 
ferers, and the ablution [washing away] of all le- 
gal oflensiveness in the sight of God — thus much 
of the nature of vicarious, the language of the 
Old Testament justifies us in attaching to the no- 
tion of atonement." Magee on the Atonement, Ap- 
pletons Edition, pp. 41, 63, 65, 67. 

Why does not the reviewer accuse him of a 
denial of the atonement, as he does the Report 
in direct language? (pp. 14, 113.) But how dare 
any man say the atonement is denied by such as 
hold the views expressed in the Report, or as 
quoted from the Discourses! Is this man com- 
missioned to speak for God, and to condemn all 
that do not yield to his speech and think as he 
thinks? Oris he left to stand like any man who 
may choose to say that other people deny what they 
do not deny, but firmly and reverently maintain? 

How this taking away, restoring, purifying, 
occurred in God's providence, I do not know, I 
cannot pretend to understand; but I do not be- 
lieve that Christ was only an "exemplar and mar- 
tyr;" or that he came only to declare the true 
God; the Universal Father; (not a cold, uncare- 
ful, solitary divinity, but a near, affectionate Pa- 
rent;) the enormity of sin; repentance and for- 



152 NOTE BY THE WRITER OF THE REPORT. 

giveness; love to God and men; immortal li fe; to 
be "God manifested in the flesh;" great, and be- 
yond all human thought as such a mission must 
have been: But I believe in a sacrifice of atone- 
ment, of reconcilement of man to God, and an 
expiation of his sins. 

The reviewer comprehends well how the "anger 
of God burns to the lowest hell" against sin, " and 
is not quenched but in the atoning blood of 
Christ," i. e., the blood of satisfaction. I believe 
that "sin is the abominable thing that God 
hateth," but I cannot comprehend how he can 
have wrath toward his feeble creature man, that 
can be only quenched in the blood of innocence, 
and not be cruel. Yet I would not say we have 
no Saviour, unless the positionin this note be right: 
no ; no ; I may be mistaken. I am a man, and 
cannot even sit in judgment on the faith of my 
fellow men; how can I decide on the economy, 
the providence of God? I must only come to 
the best conclusion I can, after careful study of 
his written word, and I must be cautious that 
no bias of education shall make me yield a fair 
judgment of the Sacred Scriptures to what has 
been written by fallible men like myself. 

He says, (page 145,) the effect of the death of 
Christ upon man's salvation is very comprehensi- 
ble ; and I am reproached because I do not find it 
so. I had thought this was among the "things the 



flOTIS BY THE WRITER OF THE REPORT. 153 

angels desire to look into " (1 Peter i. 12) ; and 
with reverence I would say with Archbishop Ma- 
gee, when it is demanded, " In what way can the 
death of Christ, considered as a sacrifice of expia- 
tion, be conceived to operate to the remission of 
sins, unless by the appeasing of a Being, who oth- 
erwise would not have forgiven us? — To this the 
answer of the Christian is, — I know not, nor does 
it concern me to know, in what manner the sacri- 
fice of Christ is connected with the forgiveness of 
sins ; it is enough that this is declared by God to 
be the medium through which my salvation is 
effected. I pretend not to dive into the coun- 
cils of the Almighty. I submit to his wisdom : 
and I will not reject his grace, because his mode 
of vouchsafing it is not within my comprehen- 
sion." And, "a sacrifice for sin, in Scripture 
language, implies solely this, — a sacrifice wisely 
and graciously appointed by God, the moral gov- 
ernor of the world, to expiate the guilt of sin in 
such a manner as to avert the punishment of it 
from the offender." " To ask why God should 
have appointed this particular mode, or in what 
way it can avert the punishment of sin, is to take 
us back to the general point [at issue with the De- 
ist, which has been already discussed.] With the 
Christian who admits redemption under any modi- 
fication, such matters cannot be subjects of inqui- 
ry." — (Magee on the Atonement, pp. 42, 50.) 



154 NOTE BY THE WRITER OJF THE REPORT 

When Unitarians speak of God as the Father 
who does not exact a satisfaction from innocence 
to appease anger toward the guilty, some per- 
sons affect to think they do not acknowledge 
the enormity, the awfulness, of sin ; and some- 
times they remind them that God is a judge 

as well as a Father, and they talk of "judicial 
guilt." This is merely arbitrary — judicial, sep- 
arate from any other guilt — a contrivance of 
man's ingenuity. God is the maker of all his 
children — "all souls are mine ;" of his own gov- 
ernment and laws; he sees through all /has care 
of all ; knows all ; knows when men repent and 
reform in their hearts, and yield to his law; he 
judges all as Cause and parent of all. He is 
never called to be a judge in another's kingdom, 
as an earthly judge, who is governed by laws 
made for him, or not under his control, or that 
have authority over him; or of another's subjects, 
to look after another's polity, and throw off his 
character of Omniscience, Creator, Father. His 
law is not a thing of policy, as among men, sepa- 
rate from himself, that requires him to demand a 
satisfaction, while in his mercy he would forgive 
the heart-penitent, as the father ran to meet the 
returning prodigal son. — (Luke 15.) 

Men that make a conflict, a strife, between the 
attributes of mercy and justice in our heavenly Fa- 
ther, do bring him down to a level with themselves. 
His mercy is justice, and his justice is mercy. 



NOTE BY THE WRITER OF THE REPOBT. 155 

I ask again, as was asked in theReport,what can 
be meant by satisfaction to God? Who can imagine 
such a thing to be made ? — Satisfaction to God ! 

2. I feel bound to allude to another assertion 
in the Review. The author says: "Yet they 
are much offended if we will not denominate 
them a church — a church of Christ — and they 
have no confidence in the creeds of men." — (Page 
144.) There is not one word about being de- 
nominated a church in the Report; and not a 
word about being offended , or any expression 
from which such an inference could be made. 
We did not say we had no confidence in the 
creeds of men; but at page 11 (see Report) 
these words will be found : "We do not withhold 
a suitable deference for the opinions of our fel- 
low-men, in ,ithis day, or in former days. Regard 
for the belief of men, as some evidence of truth, 
is natural and proper; but it is often delusive, 
and a blind submission to it takes away all inde- 
pendent thought, and fixes a false basis of reli- 
gious faith. The opinion of millions cannot super- 
sede the Scriptures. We dare not yield them an 
instant to succeeding millions" 

I suppose that by "we," the writer of the Re- 
view does not really mean himself, although he 
tells us in his preface that he uses "we," mean- 
ing himself. But here, he, probably, only means 
the church to which he belongs. The Church of 
England we love and admire, (not any intoler- 



156 NOTE BY THE WRITER OF THE REPORT. 

ance into which improper men have led her,) but 
we have never asked whether it acknowledged 
the Unitarian church, or not, or denominated it 
a church of Christ. We have not been offended, 
or talked of being offended ; nor have we heard a 
man or woman in the bounds of the Conference 
say one word on the subject of his church that was 
not kind and pleasant; and we venture to think a 
jeering fling from one of its ministers does not 
comport with a Sermon, better to be remembered, 
that blessed the meek, and not the supercilious. 
He virtually says, by the effort to sneer at 
Christians who hold the sentiments expressed in 
the Report, that the church to which he belongs 
excludes them from the Christian communion — 
from the fold of Christ. Where is the act of that 
church that gives him a right to so speak? And 
what has been done by the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in America, that authorizes one of its min- 
isters, while American men and women, with good 
will towards all, are enjoying their right of con- 
science, guarantied by the Constitution, in wor- 
shiping Almighty God according to that con- 
science, to assail them by an exclamation, "They 
are much offended if we will not denominate them 
a church — a church of Christ " ? The bigotry and 
domination implied (once a power, indeed, in Vir- 
ginia, of which this region was a part) were, long 
ago, scorned from the land with the rule of the 
British king. h. p. 



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